Statistically Speaking
by The Narrator
Summary: Statistically speaking, this story is a waste of time, but that doesn't stop Narrator from publishing it, now does it? Read and find out what happens when a semiomnipotent authouress goes on a finals bender. [Ch. 5 Update!]
1. unStandard Deviation

**Disclaimer:** How many of these things have I had to write! I still don't own Samurai Deeper Kyo, gosh-flip-flammin'-durn-it!

**Kanashimi:** Way to censor yourself there, onee-sama...

**Chapter 1: (un)Standard Deviation**

In a room dark except for the lurid illumination cast by a computer's screen, a huddled figure sat, rocking back and forth, mumbling to itself in a pathetic sing-song whisper, "...significance of the bi-variant regression correlation coefficient is a function of its t-score...multi-variant regression analysis beta-coefficient of the first independent variable is a function of the x-one y correlation minus the x-two y correlation times the x-one x-two correlation divided by one minus the square of correlation x-one x-two...probability of data set occurring to chance divided by..."

Warm golden hopeful light cut the darkness as the door of the room was hesitantly pushed open just enough to permit a second figure to enter. Very carefully, it made its way over to the miserable gargoyle of a person squatted in front of the laptop, stepping cautiously over empty discarded soda cans and candy wrappers.

"Onee-sama..."

The huddled figure continued its keening wretched mantra, heedless of the gentle coaxing tone of the visitor. "...if t-score is less than the confidence interval it is likely that the data configuration is due to chance...null hypothesis cannot be rejected..."

"Onee-sama." The second figure shook its head, regretting that it had come down to this. There was only one thing to do. "Gomen nasai, onee-sama." An iron skillet was raised high in the air. "Your statistics final is not the end of the universe. Time to snap out of it."

"...predicted value of y equals the intercept constant when...snap..."

The iron skillet wielder paused. Had she heard correctly? "Onee-sama, what did you say?"

"...end of the universe..."

"Onee-sama?"

"Hahahahaha..." The low, coughing chuckle was fit to made blood run cold – its mocking merriment echoed with the desperate doleful tenor of a mind teetering on the brink of insanity.

_'I'm too late!'_ The iron skillet swung down with the implacable velocity of divine judgment – and hit air.

"Uh-oh..."

"I'll be taking that, thank you," a rasp sounded in her ear as the hefty metal implement was twisted from her grip with strength borne from madness, "It's _FUN_ time! Hahahahahahaha...AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Just as the maniacal cackle reached its thundering crescendo, a loud explosion and a thick cloud of noxious, sugar-scented smoke filled the room. The laughing wreck of ravaged sanity vanished.

Coughing as she waved aside the choking vapor, Kanashimi assessed the situation: "This… could be a problem."

-

_'Too bad Yuya-han can't be out here with me,'_ Benitora thought regretfully as he stood on the bridge, looking up at the perfectly full moon, _'This is the perfect place for a romantic stroll – girls like her appreciate that kind of thing.'_ Of course, the black-sheep scion of the Tokugawa really could not fault the young bounty huntress. The pace Kyo had been setting the last couple of days had been killer, and even _he_, Red Tiger the Silhouette, was starting to feel the wear. It did not help matters that the demon-eyed samurai had sent Yuya out on another sake-run earlier that evening; by the time Yuya had returned, red-faced with exertion and anger, she had had only enough energy to make some half-hearted insulting comments about men in general and Kyo's habits in particular before turning on her heel to go to bed.

_'I don't know why she thought I was being perverted when I offered to carry her to her room,'_ he added ruefully, lightly touching the bump on his head. Even tired out and drained as she was, Yuya still had enough fire left to give him sound thwacking for "being a baka-hentai!" _'I only would have stayed if she needed help to change into her sleeping yukata...'_

A very wide, very lecherous grin spread across Benitora's features at that thought. _'I should go back to the lodge and check up on her, make sure Yeah, that's right, comfortable. And maybe Kyo-han hasn't finished all the sake yet...'_

So decided, the nobleman-turned-mercenary crossed the bridge, fully intending to make his way back to their lodgings for the night without further delay. I say "fully intending" because, well, man plans and God laughs heartily.

The singing was so soft that at first he was not certain he heard it. He would have brushed it off as imagination if the distinct sound of a low chuckle emanating from the dark alley he had just drawn abreast of had not made his blood run cold.

"Oi, who's there?" he called out, coming to a halt as he peered into the shadows. He had not crossed paths with any of the town's inhabitants during his late-night stroll, which made sense; all the decent, honest citizens had already gone to bed.

"...hohoho...standard deviation of a specific case above or below mean is the z-score..."

"I said, who's there!" Benitora demanded, frisson pricking across his skin like the crawling of thousands of invisible ants. His hassun, which up till then had been slung casually across his shoulders, was brought to a guard position as Benitora snapped into full battle-alert mode. Nothing was going to get past his guard tonight!

A pity he did not see the shadowed figure overhead, its silent fall led by a cast iron skillet...

-

"Benitora? 'Tora, dammit, this isn't funny!" Yuya flung the shoji to the last empty room on their floor shut with a grunt of disgust. _'Where the hell is he? Kyo's going to have his fundoshi all in a twist if Benitora doesn't quit jerking around so we can get on the road!'_

"I can't find him," Yuya announced, coming down the steps into the lodge house common room/restaurant.

"I could have told you that," Kyo said boredly, not looking up from his sake, "He left the lodge last night and never came back."

"What?" Yuya blurted, not believing her ears.

"There's no need to be shrill," Okuni observed with voluptuous disdain, "Benitora-san probably wanted to find some better quality sake than the terrible brew you brought up last night and fell asleep in a bar somewhere."

Yuya glared at Okuni, wishing there was some way the fallen miko's dulcet smug words would somehow freeze up in her throat and choke her. "That's bullshit and you know it," she declared, fists on her hips, "'Tora doesn't care what the sake tastes like, provided _he_ didn't pay for it!"

Okuni rolled her eyes but declined further comment. Kyo was far more interested in the sake. "I'm going to look for him," said Yuya, "Kyo, can you..."

Kyo raised an eyebrow at her.

"...stay here in case he comes back, both of you," she ordered, knowing she would be expecting far too much of Onime no Kyo to ask him to help her look for their friend. With that, she walked out of the common room onto the main street of the town, already clamoring with human traffic.

"Who does she think she is?" Okuni huffed, glaring after her.

"Hn," Kyo snorted, but his eyes lingered on the doorway leading out into the morning air.

-

"NO,_ thank you!"_ Yuya snarled, pushing her way out of the opium-smoke filled den, breathing a sigh of relief only when she had gotten a good ten paces down the road. _'Do I LOOK like a girl interested in a "little bit of action"! Damned pigs! I hope that guy's eye stays black-and-blue for MONTHS!'_ The other drugged-up opium junkies had not even been fazed by her laying out one of their number with a well-aimed fist, no, they had just stood in line, each trying to get in his own indecent proposition.

Yuya's face was red to her ears from some of their suggestions. _'When I find Benitora, he's in for the beating of his life! And when I get tired, I'll tie him up and hang him on a tree to let other people take swings at him with sticks!'_

In her quest to find her missing friend, Yuya had taken Okuni's snide suggestion to heart, asking after Benitora in every respectable drinking establishment. When she could find no trace of him, she had been forced to search the less-respectable venues, finally winding up in the bad dives in the bad section of town. She had kept her revolver out and at the ready, even though it was broad daylight. Despite the fact that Kyo often made disparaging remarks about her intelligence, Yuya was nobody's fool.

"Where _is_ he?" Yuya asked herself, not wanting to admit that she was starting to get a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach. _'Calm down, girl, Benitora's alright. Maybe he just crossed paths with some bad liquor and his brain's so addled, he's lying face down in an alley somewhere. It's not like he could have run into any of the Juunishinshou or the Mibu or...shit, I've _got _to find him!'_

-

Benitora was not lying face down in an alley, brain scrambled by alcohol. Rather, he was flat out on his back, struggling to regain consciousness in the middle of a perfectly respectable residential road.

_'This has got to be the _worst_ hangover since that time Nobu-nii-chan snuck that gai-jin sake into our room...'_ he thought, painfully squinting up at a morning sky so bright that it was an overarching smear of white and light grey. His ears were ringing from the loud cacophony of birds twittering their lungs out, and his nose wrinkled at the various strong stenches that washed over him, making his pounding headache ten times worse. _'Don't tell me I fell asleep in some trashed up alley...'_ He liked his clothes without the smell of garbage, thank you very much.

As least he was not feeling nauseous. He had no idea where he was or how the hell he had gotten there, but now was not the time to worry about details like that. He had to get back to Yuya and the others. _'Right, up we go!'_

But for some strange reason, "up" was only as far as his hands and feet. _'Well, I look like a bloody idiot on all fours with my ass in the air,'_ Benitora thought, trying to push himself upright onto his feet. His legs did not seem have the strength to support his full weight for very long and he kept falling back on his hands. _'What the fuck...?'_

Just then, Benitora noticed something on the ground, right where his hands were. Or rather, he noticed that he had paws right where his hands used to be...

"What was that?" Yuya gasped, freezing midway across the bridge as an animal's agonized howl pierced her ears, sending a flock of sparrows into panicked flight. _'It sounds like the poor thing is pain!'_ She hurried to reach the far end of the bridge, toward the walled houses where the last dying echoes of the anguished, almost human cry were fading.

_'Yuya-han?'_ Benitora paused in the middle of full-on freak-out. He did not know what had made him think that she was near, until he sniffed the air, finding the elusive sweet scent he knew could only belong to one person in the entire world. _'YUYA-HAN! She's here! She found me! She's gotta help me!'_ Benitora took off like a shot, not giving thought to the fact that he was much faster on all four paws than on two human feet.

Yuya turned down one street, then another, searching for the source of the cry. _'Why are you getting so worked up about one animal?'_ a small part of her consciousness called "Logic" demanded, _'You've got more important things to worry about, girl!'_

_'But it was hurting - it needs help!'_ she protested mentally, even though she knew she was being silly, not only for going out of her way to help some stray, but also for arguing with herself!

A loud bark made her pull short with a startled yelp. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the rather large, roan-furred mutt barreling toward her from around the corner ahead. He was barking his head off, the bright sunlight gleaming on his bared canines as he closed in on her.

_'Yuya-han! Yuya-han! Man am I glad to see you!'_ Benitora's grin was equal parts relief and happiness upon spotting her. He did not understand why Yuya was staring at him in stark terror as he ran to her, or why he could not distinguish the color of the girl's eyes from her hair (come to think of it, the whole world seemed have suddenly changed to nothing but shades of grey). But that did not matter. Yuya was here now, she would help him make sense of everything! _'You won't believe what's happened to me! I need your help!'_

_'Oh...shit!'_ Yuya thought as the slavering hound gathered himself to spring at her, possibly to rip out her throat. She had to defend herself. _'Use your gun, you silly twit!'_ her instincts screamed, but her arm seemed frozen by her side. _'I'm going to die,'_ she told herself frankly as the dog jumped. "Argh!" she screamed in panic as the full weight of the animal crashed into her like a sack of rice.

_'Sorry about that Yuya-han!'_ He had not meant to knock her on the ground like that, but he had not quite gotten the hang of the body he had found himself in. _'Yuya-han, you all right? Oi, Yuya-han!'_

"Augh, get off me, get off me!" Yuya shrieked, trying to shove the barking dog off her chest, protect her throat, and roll away all at the same time, "Someone, help me! It's trying to kill me!"

_'Wha...! What are you talking about, Yuya-han! It's me, it's Benitora!'_

"Go AWAY!" she yelled, finally managing to push the vicious beast off of her purely through the virtue of adrenaline. But before she could get to her feet and make good to her escape, the dog's jaws clamped down on the trailing sleeve of her kimono, arresting any chance of retreat.

Yuya was about to start screaming and hollering again when _something_ about the way the dog stared at her over the printed cotton cloth made her pause. He was not trying to rip her to shreds and eat her, he wanted her to... "What do you want?" she found herself asking. '_This is impossible, I can't believe I'm _talking _to a _dog!_ And expecting an answer!_'

As if responding to her inner tirade, the dog made slight pulling motions on her sleeve – if he had been a person, Yuya would have sworn he was trying to get her to follow him somewhere.

_'This isn't happening, this isn't happening, it _can't _be happening!' _"You want me to come with you?" Yuya guessed.

This time, there was no mistaking the gesture. The dog nodded, his tail wagging energetically. Yuya could have sworn he was grinning at her around the mouthful of sleeve.

_'Okay, I've obviously snapped or I'm dreaming...yeah, that's right, I'm still dreaming. This is all just one mad crazy dream where I'm talking to a dog and he's...well, I don't know just yet.' _Relieved to have puzzled it out, Yuya felt more agreeably inclined to her canine assailant. "There's something you want to show me, Inu-san?"

The dog frowned at her, but nodded again.

"Then lead the way," she said, "But on one condition: no more jumping on me, got it?"

The dog nodded vigorously and let go of her sleeve. _'No problem Yuya-han! This way!' _Benitora started jogging back to where the whole incomprehensible mess had started, checking over his shoulder every once and while to make sure she kept up. _'I've got to make her understand what's happened! Not that I quite understand it myself, but...'_

"I need to get my head examined," Yuya muttered to herself as she followed the dog around the corner and down a side street, "Here I am following some crazy mutt around town when I should be looking for Benitora... I don't care if this is a dream, there's definitely something wrong with all of this and... hey, isn't that...?"

The dog had sat down on his haunches beside a pile of clothes, but that was not what had caught Yuya's attention. An alleyway opened up onto the street and at its mouth lay a _very_ familiar-looking weapon. "What the hell is Benitora's hassun doing out here?" she asked herself, bending over to pick it up. It was a bit heavier than she expected, and rather unwieldy. There did not appear to be any damage to it, so why would Benitora discard it, here of all places, unless...

_'Unless he's hurt!'_ Yuya's attention zeroed in on the twilit alley, scanning for any sign of Benitora, and fearing that she would find him. "Benitora?"

_'Yes, exactly! I knew you'd get it, Yuya-han! __Thank Kami-sama! __I don't... Yuya-han, why are you going in there?'_

"Quiet!" Yuya hissed at the dog, who for some reason started yapping his head off again. Gripping Benitora's hassun tightly and taking a deep breath, she began walking down the alley, praying that she would at least find him alive.

_'Oi, don't go in there! It's dangerous! It smells bad! Yuya-han get back here! Yuya-han!'_ In his frantic desire to prevent any calamity befalling the bounty huntress, Benitora threw all caution to the winds and leaped, his jaws closing firmly on her obi.

"AAAAAAHHHH!" Yuya screamed, suddenly seized from behind by an inexorable force that very nearly ripped her obi from her waist as it dragged her back out into the street. She whirled around, twisting out of her attacker's grasp, ready to lay into him with everything she had... only to see the mutt standing in front of her, growling and barking as though admonishing her for doing something foolhardy.

"I told you not to jump on me again!" Yuya scolded, laying a hand over her pounding heart. The stupid dog was going to be the death of her! "Go home!" she told it, making a shooing gesture with her free hand, "Go along now! Thanks for showing me the way, but I need to find my friend now!" She turned around, only to find the dog had run to place himself between her and her desired path.

_'I'm sorry about grabbing you like that Yuya-han, but you need to stop and listen to me!'_

"You're starting to get on my nerves," growled Yuya, narrowing her eyes dangerously at the dog. The canine seemed to wilt slightly under her glare, but growled back resolutely.

_'No way I'm letting you past me. You _don't _want to go in here!'_

"Let me through!" Yuya shouted, trying to push past him.

It was not entirely Benitora's fault that she landed on her backside, but he knew an advantageous situation when one landed in his...er, paws. Darting over to his pile of clothes before she could regain her footing, Benitora snapped up the one article that could not fail to drive his point home.

"Itai..." Yuya whimpered as she sat up. _'I can already feel the bruises – stupid dog!'_ She reached for Benitora's hassun, intending to use it to help get to her feet.

Instead, her hand encountered the furry forepaw of the dog. "Leave me alone, dammit!" she snapped at him, "Why don't you just..." Her eyes fixated on the cloth hanging from the dog's mouth.

A very familiar bit of cloth.

With red and white stripes.

Yuya suddenly felt very, very cold. Unless Benitora was off running around somewhere without his clothes _or_ his weapon... She licked her suddenly dry lips and looked the dog in the eye. "Benitora?"she asked in the barest thread of a whisper.

The dog nodded once and winked at her.

Yuya fainted.

-

"Tell me you're not going out to look for her, Kyo-sama," Okuni said in an irritated voice, her pristine brow furrowing slightly as Kyo wordlessly got to his feet and picked up his katana.

"Fine, I won't," Kyo replied, making for the common room door.

Okuni heaved an exasperated sigh (making nearly all the men in the room collapse from nosebleeds) and got to her feet to follow him. "Why are you so concerned for one little slip of a girl?" she demanded, placing herself between him and the door, "You know you'd be better off just leaving her behind."

"Both of my servants are missing and that's inconvenient. Now get out of the way, Okuni," Kyo said evenly, although the look in his eyes promised a terrible punishment if she did not comply.

Okuni shivered slightly but smiled, arching an eyebrow. "Oh, yes," she simpered, "You couldn't possibly do without those two deadweights, now could you?"

Kyo made a growling sound in his throat, and his hand went up to either push her out of the way or effect a more permanent solution.

"Kyo! Okuni-san!"

"Woof!"

Kyo's eyes widened slightly and he pushed past Okuni without further ado, leaving the woman very put out. Okuni turned to see what had so diverted his attention.

_'Her, of course,'_ she thought acidly, _'Noisy, undeveloped, uncouth little... why is that dog with her?'_

"Something terrible has happened!" a dusty, disheveled Yuya cried, bursting into the lodge house, a large, flop-eared dog hot on her heels. He was barking so loudly that they could barely hear her over the din. Yuya brandished the hassun in her hands, obviously trying to explain something about it. She very nearly speared the unfortunate man eating breakfast at the table beside the door in her agitation.

"Get that animal out of here!" bellowed the owner, while patrons contributed various exclamations of surprise and outrage to the general commotion.

"Kyo, it's Benitora! He's...!"

"I said, GET THAT DAMNED ANIMAL OUT OF MY INN!"

"Woof woof bark grrrrrrrrrrrr woof!"

"How dare anyone bring an animal like that into...!"

"Get it out of here, I'm trying to eat my breakfast!"

"Eat your breakfast! She nearly took my head off with that thing!"

"It's probably diseased!"

"Yuya, what on earth possessed you to bring that filthy beast in here? Kyo-sama, tell her to take it away!"

"He's _not_ a filthy beast! Will you just listen to me...!"

"GET HIM OUT OF HERE OR I WILL SUMMON THE NEIGHBORHOOD POLICE!"

"Shut up."

It took only two words, not even shouted, but the entire establishment fell silent as suddenly at though everyone in it had been struck dumb. "Take the dog outside," Kyo continued, looking sharply at Yuya when she opened her mouth to protest, "We're leaving this shit-hole."

No one had the nerve to make a parting shot as the loud-mouth blonde and the dog preceded the scary, crimson-eyed samurai and indecently dressed miko out onto the street. Even the innkeeper had no inclination whatsoever to follow them and demand payment for all the sake the samurai had drunk that morning.

Kyo marched them practically to the outskirts of town before allowing her to talk.

"What happened?"

Yuya breathed a sigh of relief. "It's Benitora," Yuya said, "When I went looking for him earlier this morning, this dog attacked... well, he didn't really attack me, he only wanted me to follow him although I knew it was crazy and..." She glanced over at Kyo, who was staring at her impassively, and Okuni, who was rolling her eyes at Yuya's babbling. Yuya glared at the miko and started over. "I found this and a pile of his clothes lying in the middle of the street," she said, holding out the hassun and the bundle she had made of Benitora's clothing, "At first I thought maybe Benitora had gotten into a fight and was lying wounded somewhere, but then what would he be doing without his clothes?"

Okuni stifled a ladylike snort; obviously, Yuya had _no idea _what sort of rhetorical broadside she had opened herself to. Unfortunately Okuni was too well-bred to take advantage of it. Besides, it was far too easy.

Kyo said nothing, merely waiting for Yuya to get to the point.

"And... well..." Even with the evidence standing right there beside her, his wide mahogany eyes pleading with her to say what needed to be said for his sake, Yuya found herself reluctant to blurt out the truth. Standing here in the light of day with Okuni ready for any opportunity to make a disparaging comment and Kyo... well, who knew what Kyo would do if he thought she had suddenly gone off the deep end.

"You realized Benitora had been turned into a dog," Kyo finished for her without batting an eye.

"Yes, exactly!" Yuya exclaimed in relief, "Wait a minute..." _'Did he just say...?'_

"Kyo-sama, what are you talking about?" Okuni breathed, her gaze switching back and forth between Kyo and Yuya, "Kyo-sama, is this some sort of joke the two of you are having at my expense?" Anger and confusion warred across her features.

_'It ain't no joke, Okuni-han!'_ Benitora (who felt he had been quiet more than long enough) contributed, _'I sure as hell wish it was!'_

Okuni recoiled slightly from the dog's outburst, still staring at Kyo and Yuya as if waiting for the punch line.

"Kyo, how did you know that this is Benitora?" Yuya asked, raising her voice over Benitora's barking and Okuni's wordless, indignant sputtering.

"As if I'd forget the feel of the ken-ki of anyone who's crossed blades with me," Kyo sneered, "Stupid girl."

"_WHAT_ DID YOU SAY!" Yuya flared. _'Oh, there are times when I could just...just...HIT HIM!'_ Not that she would ever be so foolish as to try, but the temptation was there all the same.

Kyo smirked at her rage and then looked down at Benitora. "How the hell did this happen?" he asked the warrior-turned-dog.

Benitora's tail wagged happily as he more or less shrugged his canine shoulders. _'Search me, Kyo-han. But thanks for saying you recognized my ken-ki!'_

"I don't think he knows," Yuya interpreted needlessly. She clutched the clothing bundle to her chest as she knelt beside Benitora. "Dammit, how could you let this happen to you!" she scolded, "I can't believe a grown man needs to have a chaperone!"

_'Oi, it's not like I _asked _for this to happen to me!'_ Benitora whimpered, _'Have a little heart Yuya-han! I mean, it's bad enough...'_ He smelled the tears before he actually saw them, the bitter saline odor of her inner tumult and concern for _him_ alerting his heightened senses.

"I was so worried about you, when I couldn't find you earlier, and now this..." she admitted to him, blinking rapidly to keep the tears at bay, "We've got to find someway of turning you back!"

_'Hey, hey, don't worry, Yuya-han! I'm sure we'll think of something. Just don't cry!'_ Instinctively, he licked away the tears that escaped her best efforts.

"Hey, just because you're a dog now, don't think that...!" Yuya blurted, but her habitual anger simply did not manifest. "It'll be okay," she whispered, touching her forehead to his, "We'll find a way. Right, Kyo?"

"Hn." Kyo grunted an affirmative, but only Okuni's sharp eyes caught the momentary frown of displeasure that marred his features as he regarded his two "servants."

-

The swordsman stood firm in the midst of the clearing, thickly-leaved branches of the forest canopy casting all into sable-green twilight. But neither light nor darkness mattered to one such as he.

"How long will you insist on delaying your death?" Akira challenged his attacker, his ken-ki probing for the malevolent presence that had beset him without warning.

"Ohohohohoho... assumption of equal variance in a case of less than one thousand units..."

_'There!'_ Ice blasted across the shadowed space, mercilessly enveloping everything in its path in killing cold. The other presence vanished like a candle's flame extinguished by the wind.

Akira allowed himself a small smirk of satisfaction. For all the trouble whoever it was had been, they certainly had not expected his final attack and had thus paid the price.

He was just about to sheathe his katana when a single smothered snicker informed him that he had been wrong.

Dead wrong.

A loud explosion shook the forest and a cloud of blue and black smoke enveloped the empty clearing.

"Gah! Argh, dammit Bob, how many times have I told you that I DON'T NEED THE FREAKIN' SPECIAL EFFECTS ALREADY!" the person at the epicenter of the blast screamed to the heavens.

The heavens remained silent, so the person had to content herself with muttered, dire threats to what would happen to a certain laptop's motherboard once she got back to the real world.

"And where the heck am I, anyway?" Kanashimi wondered, peering through the dissipating gloom, "Where's Kyo and them? I told Bob to land me at the site of onee-sama's last..."

Her booted foot just barely missed stepping on the small white, stuffed bunny rabbit that lay disconsolately on the ground. "...attack. Damn, she's moving faster than I thought!" Kanashimi bent down to retrieve the transformed Akira. The blind swordsman was the latest victim in her sister's maniacal rampage, but he certainly would not be the last.

"It's not fair that _I_ have to be the one to clean up her mess just because she flips out over finals," Kanashimi sulked, "And I doubt I'm going to get any playtime with Kyo! Unless of course..."

A chilling, evil laugh filled the clearing, making all the fluffy critters in hearing cower in their dens.

-

Narrator here. In the midst of writing _Intermezzo,_ my muse of Angst, Drama, and Other Not-So-Fluffy Feelings was walloped over the head with a shillelagh by my muse of Comedy and Insanity, thus giving rise to this fic. (rubs head ruefully) I think my statistics final had something to do with it. In any case, this is just an indulgent, insane, throw-away fic I wrote to soothe the emotional backlash I had to writing a serious work like _Intermezzo._ I may or may not make reference to it here, but I get the feeling this is going to become an independent project.

**Kanashimi:** Which means, anyone who reads this had better prepare themselves for mind-bending insanity and lack of plot.

**Narrator:** Too right, unfortunately. P.S., I got an "A" on that statistics final! W00t! (does happy victory dance to the tune of "The Cuckold Comes out of the Amery")

**Kanashimi:** (sighs) (thwacks Narrator on the head with a shillelagh)

**Narrator: **Itai! Ooooo, pretty stars...! (passes out)

Salute!


	2. Correlation Coefficient of Chaos

**Disclaimer:** Samurai Deeper Kyo. Not mine. Very sad.

Narrator here. Now, I had no inclination whatsoever of really following up on the first chapter, but owing to the fact that this fic was actually reviewed...

**Kanashimi:** What do you mean "reviewed"? You mean as in, people actually took the time to write comments on this load of tripe?!

**Narrator:** (nods) Yup. Not only that, many of them seemed to find it amusing.

**Kanashimi:** (stare) There are people out on who think _you_ are _funny?!_

**Narrator:** (irritated) No need to sound so incredulous... in any case, thanks to: **Lady of Genesis** (Cute? Okay, I was going more for insane, but if cute does it for ya... and good luck on midterms!), Renara, Anonymous reviewer, **Lady water 2010 **(Amen to that!), Placid Snowflake, **nekozuki1776** (yeah, Benitora really is more of a dog-person than anything, ne? As for Akira... well, yeah... blame sugar for that one. By the bye, I use your name in this fic; hope you don't mind), **Cheeto** (Yay, a fellow Benitora fan! Though it's not really a story about him per say, I wanted to give Tora-chan more "screen-time" than he normally gets.), **Cherry **( Hey girl, long time, no hear! I do NOT have too much time on my hands - I credit it all to a strange confluence of insomnia, exams-cramming, and just plain wigging out.), **Arain Ross/Arain Rowan** (Dragon Sword and bloodlust eh? Okay, thanks, I'll remember that...), **Alea Seikou **(Yes, math is evil, and statistics should be condemned to rot in the eighth circle of Hell for all eternity! AAAaaaaargh! Erm, yes... glad you found it amusing. As for "Kyo playtime," you'll get your answer in this chapter!), **starofhades** (It's was mainly thanks to your review that I decided to continue this. Hope I don't disappoint!), and **luna-magic-2005** (See, people do think I'm funny!)

**Kanashimi:** Ever consider the fact that they're all just easily amused?

**Narrator: **You say that like it's a bad thing.

**------------------------------------------------**

**Chapter 2: Correlation Coefficient (of Chaos)**

"... 'laughter.' So, after you stopped, you heard laughter, and...then what?"

Benitora thought hard, cudgeling his brain to remember just what it was that scary voice had said last night. Hesitantly, he turned his head sideways and began scratching another set of kanji in the dirt with the stick he held firmly clasped in his jaws.

"'Standard'... 'Devil'... no, 'Demon'... what the...? 'Tora, are you sure you have that right?" Yuya asked, staring at the nearly incomprehensible chicken scratch in front of her. Owing to the fact that no one could understand Benitora's barking, they had tried several methods to help relate just what had befallen him. Barking once for "yes" and two for "no" had not gotten them very far, and Okuni complained the noise was giving her a headache. Having Benitora try and act it out had resulted in an entertaining few minutes as he tried to demonstrate just what he had done with his hassun; even Kyo cracked a smile, while Yuya had been reduced to spate of giggles that rendered her nearly breathless.

It was Benitora who seized on the best solution, quite literally. Yuya had picked up a stick and was doodling in the dirt, trying to vent her frustration at not being able to understand him. Benitora yanked the stick from her hand and proceeded to scrawl a barely legible "Read this!" in hiragana in the dirt. Unfortunately, kanji were hard enough for him to write with human hands and a decent brush and ink on rice paper, so it took several attempts each time to produce something that Yuya, Kyo and Okuni could decipher.

"You were walking back to the lodge," Kyo read, almost to himself.

"...and you heard someone laughing," Okuni continued, "muttering something about 'standard devil actions...'"

"...and when you tried to defend yourself, you... blacked out?" Yuya concluded.

_"Exactly!"_ Benitora barked around the mouthful of wood, which he immediately deposited in Yuya's lap so he could work out the cramps in his jaw.

"Oh, gross, Benitora!" Yuya exclaimed, gingerly picking up the drool-drenched stick. She flung it as hard as she could to one side.

_"Oh, stick! I'll get it, I'll get it!"_ Woofing excitedly, Benitora scampered after the stick, his old head scarf, now a bandana tied around his neck, flapping in the breeze.

"Ano... is it just me or is 'Tora getting more dog-like by the second?" Yuya asked no one in particular.

"At least he's bright enough to fetch," Okuni observed.

"_Do it again, do it again, do it again!"_ Benitora begged, triumphantly bearing the reclaimed bit of lumber back to Yuya. He realized everyone was staring him with varying degrees of shock. "Growf?" "W_hy are ya'll lookin' at me like that?"_

"We've _got_ to find a way to turn him back to normal," stated Yuya.

"I don't know about that, Yuya-san, I think he's fine just the way he is," a voice countered cheerfully.

"Yukimura-san!" Okuni and Yuya exclaimed, looking up to see the grinning master strategist walking toward them.

"Woof!" Benitora added. _"And just what the hell did you mean 'he's fine just the way he is'?!"_

"Yukimura," Kyo acknowledged with a nod. His narrowed eyes went past Yukimura and settled on the person accompanying him. "I see you've brought along your little friend."

"Stuff it," Sasuke growled, but he seemed less angered by Kyo's remark than by the potted fern he was carrying in both hands.

"Ano, Sasuke-kun, why are you...?" Yuya began.

"Because Saizo's an old git who's too slow to dodge, that's why!" the young onimitsu snapped.

"Maa, maa," Yukimura placated, laying a hand on his subordinate's shoulder. "We had a bit of a run-in with an interesting character," he said to the others, his laughing blue eyes suddenly serious, "To make a long story short, poor Saizo suffered the brunt of the ambush."

"Ano, how do you know that's Saizo-san?" Yuya wanted to know, bending down to examine the plant.

"He has retained his ki," Kyo told her, "It is the same thing that happened to Benitora – his outer form changed, but his spirit did not."

"As you say," Yukimura agreed, nodding, "I actually came looking for Kyo-san, hoping that you, with your familiarity with the Mibu, might know just what sort of demonic power might have achieved this transformation."

"Mibu?" Okuni echoed, arching an eyebrow, "How can you know that the Mibu are responsible for this, Yukimura-san?"

"I don't," Yukimura admitted blithely, "But it makes the most sense. Otherwise we'll simply have to assume that some malevolent force has suddenly taken to mind to randomly attack warriors and change them into various flora and fauna. If that's the case, there's not much we can do."

"In the meantime, _I'm_ the one who has to cart the baka's fertilized ass around," Sasuke concluded darkly.

The fern's leaves quivered, even though Sasuke was holding the pot steady and there was no wind. Apparently, being transformed into a member of the family _Plagiogyriaceae_ did not preclude Saizo from comprehending human speech or reacting to it.

"You mentioned that you saw the person who attacked you," Kyo said to Yukimura.

Yukimura shook his head. "Not exactly, no; I said they were an interesting character precisely because not even Sasuke could see or sense them until they attacked. The only thing I can say for certain is that I heard a child's voice sing something about 'standard error of the difference,' and 'test statistics determine distance from null hypotheses.'"

"That doesn't sound like a spell," Okuni said.

"That's because it's not a spell," someone informed her.

"Who's there?!" Weapons came out, glittering in the sunlight as the companions scanned their surroundings, Kyo, Yukimura, and Sasuke probing with their ken-ki.

_"If you've come back for a fight, I'm ready to give to ya, you bastard!"_ Benitora barked his challenge.

"I hardly think you'd be worth my time," the unseen stranger retorted, their voice echoing so it seemed to come from all directions at once, "And besides, you really ought not to be rude to someone who is only trying to help you."

"_Help? Don't make me laugh!"_ Benitora retorted. Then he froze. _"Hey wait a minute, you can understand what I'm saying?"_

"Of course I understand you, Benitora the Silhouette. Now stop barking, you're giving me a headache!"

"Do you think this is a trap, Kyo-san?" Yukimura asked under his breath.

"Of course I do," Kyo replied, not letting his guard waver one inch. "Whoever you are, show yourself!"

"If that's what you want..."

The air suddenly became ten degrees colder and a black cloud scudded over the face of the sun.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Yuya mentioned to anyone who was listening.

_"KANASHIMI NO BISHONEN SUBJUGATION RYU...**DUCT TAPE BIND!**_"

The battle yell came from overhead, and a dark shape streaked down toward them, aiming for Kyo. Everyone else wisely scattered as Kyo turned to meet the attack. A concussive wave from two ken-ki impacting head-on threw them to the ground as the earth shook. An explosion of light and thunder blanked out the senses of sight and hearing for a few precious moments, until the ground stopped shuddering and all became ominously still.

_"What the hell was that?!"_ Benitora demanded, standing up shakily. He sneezed on the choking cloud of dust that had enveloped them.

"Kyo-sama are you...?" Okuni called anxiously.

"Kyo!" Yuya shouted, running blindly through the clearing cloud to where she had last seen Kyo.

"Ooo, I'm sorry, but Kyo's kinda of tied up for the time being," someone told her cheerfully. Yuya pulled up short, her eyes wide as the dust finally vanished to reveal...

"3.4 seconds is a new record for me, I must admit," the little girl with the pointy ears and taley-bobs sprouting from her forehead informed Yuya, preening as she sat on Kyo's chest. The only reason the irate samurai was not doing anything about it was because he was wrapped head-to-foot in what appeared to be silver ribbon, with a strip of it forming a gag over his mouth. The little girl grinned at Yuya, showing off a pair of ultra-sharp canines. "I'll let him go if you promise to listen to me."

Shock robbed everyone but Yukimura of their power of speech. "Then tell us what it is you have to say," he managed, "eto...?"

"Kanashimi; my name is Kanashimi," the little girl informed him. She frowned. "I thought you knew that already."

"I beg your pardon?" Yukimura blurted.

"What?!" Sasuke and Yuya demanded.

"Bowr?!" _"Don't tell me Yukimura's been hiding stuff from us again!"_

"Don't be silly!" Kanashimi snapped, flouncing her hair, "All of you know who I am, especially you, Benitora! And you, too, Yuya!"

As one Sasuke, Okuni, and Yukimura turned to stare at the pair so named. "I have no idea what she's talking about!" Yuya protested, while Benitora added his vociferous, intelligible agreement.

"You don't?" Kanashimi asked, clearly disbelieving, "Hmph!" She got to her feet and hopped off Kyo. "Maybe it's because you don't remember my chibi-youkai form, it's been a while after all..." she muttered. She shrugged. "Well, then, there's not choice but to..." She pulled a whip out of thin air and cracked it.

One bolt of black lightning and another cloud of choking blue smoke later, the little demon girl had transformed into a voluptuous young brunette as tall as Yukimura, her mini-skirt and tank-top ensemble replaced by a black and green bamboo-patterned kimono.

"That should do it," Kanashimi announced, "Now then, you can't possibly say you don't recognize me now!"

"No..." Yukimura said for everyone as they gaped at her.

"What?!" Kanashimi demanded, "The fourth wall has been utterly destroyed since onee-sama entered this reality! You should remember every twisted little thing we've done to you!"

They blinked. "'Fourth wall'?" Yukimura echoed.

"What do you mean, 'every twisted little thing'?" Okuni added.

"Erm, well anyway...hmmmm." Kanashimi frowned thoughtfully. Suddenly, her eyes widened. "You _should _remember it all... unless, somehow...the wall's still intact!"

"What are you _talking_ about?!" Sasuke yelled, at the frayed end of his patience.

"There's no time to explain that, unless you want me going into chaos string theory," Kanashimi said briskly, "In any case, the most important thing is that we must stop my onee-sama... at any cost."

"Who?" Yuya asked.

"My onee-sama. She's the one responsible for all this. She snapped because of finals and now she's gone chaos berserk, turning this reality upside down."

_"I'm pretty sure she's speaking Japanese, but I'm not understanding a word she's saying!"_ Benitora contributed.

"So what you're telling us," Okuni said, glaring at Benitora to shut him up, "is that you are the younger sister of some omnipotent being bent on chaos, who is now here to stop her and in the process, you are enlisting our help."

"Yup," Kanashimi replied with enthusiastic nodding, "Only onee-sama's normally not omnipotent, 'cuz she's got a Code of Fanfic Authoress Ethics that she sticks to that limits her. I'm guessing in her current condition, she's discarded them and that's one of the reasons why everything's so f-ed over and you guys don't even realize it."

"You're being awfully informative for someone who just took down Onime no Kyo," Sasuke noted, "We don't even know if you're telling the truth. What the hell makes you think we'd help? There's no way we can trust you!"

"Well, your other option is that you all fight me right now and then I take Kyo here home as my newest pet," Kanashimi said complacently, "Heads, I win, tails, you lose, if you're going to be like that."

"What?!" Yuya and Okuni demanded.

"You're pretty sure of yourself," Sasuke replied in much the same vein as Kanashimi's. It would have taken a very observant person to note that he had shifted his stance ever-so-slightly...

"Truth be told, she has every right to be, ne?" Yukimura asked, casually stepping in between Sasuke and Kanashimi.

"Yukimura!" Sasuke exclaimed hotly.

"In fact, I am somewhat surprised that someone so powerful would need our help," Yukimura continued, ignoring Sasuke's protest, "Why are you not able to stop your onee-sama unaided?"

Kanashimi appraised him coolly. "Think about it, hon. I'm her _younger_ sister; normally, I'd be able just to guilt, trick, or otherwise manipulate her, but in a situation like this, knowing that she's gone off the deep end, means I appreciate the fact that she can kick my ass."

"Ah, I understand completely," Yukimura said, being a younger sibling himself.

Everyone else exchanged uncomprehending glances.

"So, you'll help me?" Kanashimi asked him.

"Of course," Yukimura replied.

"Hey, wait a minute...!"

"Rawf woof?!" _"Are you crazy?!"_

"Who died and made you emperor?!"

"Are you trying to get us killed?!"

It took a while, but Yukimura finally persuaded Sasuke, Benitora, Yuya and Okuni to go along with Kanashimi for the time being. "She has said she needs us, and for now, our choices are too limited to do anything else," he said as they all huddled in conference some distance away from Kanashimi.

"Yeah, but why us?" Yuya wanted to know, although she had pretty much resigned herself to Yukimura's line of reasoning.

"Because you all represent the core of this reality," Kanashimi answered her, breaking in, "Sorry, but we really need to get a move on, guys. If my onee-sama is looking to totally screw over this universe like I think she is, you're the ones she'll be after. By making it so you can't function in your proper roles, she'll throw everything out of whack and thus destabilize the very fabric of existence."

"Wow," Yuya gulped, "That sounds pretty serious."

"You have no idea chica," Kanashimi drawled.

"Amazing that something so dangerous can be achieved simply by changing Benitora-kun into a dog and Saizo into a fern," marveled Yukimura.

"Well, that and turning Akira into a stuffed bunny rabbit; onee-sama's far from done, though," Kanashimi said, reaching into her obi and pulling out the plush animal. She tossed it to Yuya, who caught it neatly. "Here, you take him. Since onee-sama's got it into her head that the two of you make an interesting couple thanks to nekozuki1776, he's _your_ responsibility from now on."

"What was that?!" Kyo demanded sharply as Yuya stared dazedly at his former protégé. Only, because he was still encased in and gagged with duct-tape, it came out more as, "Ahhh uhn arrr?!" Benitora added a sharp, threatening growl as he eyed the rabbit like it was a chew toy he couldn't wait to sink his teeth into.

"Oh, don't tell me you're jealous, Kyo-honey, Benitora," Kanashimi cooed. Kyo glared at her over duct-tape gag, while Benitora continued to stare fixedly at Akira-usagi.

"Why do I get the feeling we're all doomed?" Sasuke commented.

----------------------------

Migeira was enjoying the fine weather in his particular way; that is, he was composing various _haiku_ in his head as he ambled along with a fixed frown of concentration on his face that warned off anyone who might be foolish enough to approach him.

_'The distant petal_

_Drifted languidly, unseen_

_Stirred by unfelt breeze'_

He was rather pleased with himself. It had irked him that he had missed the Edo cherry blossom season thanks in no small part to his task of observing Onime no Kyo and those traveling with him. To compose a poem of wistful longing for that missed opportunity suited his mood.

"Round, round, upside derivative of the mean sample score..."

The sing-song child's voice caught him in his tracks. Migeira scanned the immediate area, wondering how on earth he had failed to sense the presence of another. There was a roadside shrine crowded with miniature Jizo statues several paces ahead; crouched in front of it, staring fixedly at the spinning pinwheels scattered among the statuettes was a little girl who could have been no more than five.

_'Well, that explains it,'_ Migeira consoled himself as he regarded her, _'An innocent would not project any malice in her ki, and could thus be safely disregarded. I do wonder where her parents are, though.'_

"Spinny, spin-spin, the colors within...predicted y-value is constant a plus slope times standard deviation-y over standard deviation-x times the x-value..."

But as Migeira took another, careful look at the seemingly oblivious child, it became apparent that _something_ just wasn't right. It wasn't really her appearance that set him on edge (though admittedly, her hot-pink pigtails and strange garments were somewhat odd). No, something about her ki was simply..._off_, and the more he focused on her, the more bizarre and dangerous she seemed.

_'If I didn't know better, I'd say she seems more like a being _above_ this plane of existence than part of it.'_ A desire to run like hell as far as he could from this strange child took root in Migeira. As much as he hated such cowardly action, it struck him as an entirely excellent plan of action. This person, or whatever they were, was not someone he could or should try to come toe-to-toe with.

As it turned out, Migeira need not have troubled himself with his line of analytical thought. As he stood there, the little girl abruptly stopped singing.

"From Jizo's haven...the fledgling sparrow tumbles...as seen from hawk's height." She did not turn to look at him.

Migeira's breath caught. If he was not mistaken, the strange child had just alluded to a haiku that would not be composed for a century and a half! "As the arrow flies...the waiting hawk swift descends...but misses his mark," he replied, readying his Muramasa cannon.

"Unspecified variant z independently affects y apart from x... aren't you being a little too optimistic?" she retorted with a giggle.

"Perhaps," Migeira replied, leveling his cannon at the back of her head.

Unseen by him, the little girl grinned, her pink eyes glinting with mad glee...

----------------------------------

"So we really don't have a better course of action than to wait for your onee-sama to attack us again, do we, Kanashimi-san," Yukimura said as the group walked along, shaded by the overarching branches of the forest that spread out for miles on either side of the narrow road they traveled.

"If I had any idea who exactly she'd attack next, we would," Kanashimi replied disconsolately, "But I don't."

"Well, as much as I dislike being on the defensive, I think that as long as we know how she'll attack, we'll be able to prepare for it," Yukimura said, already running various stratagems through his mind. He had only been attacked once, but Yukimura had a fairly good idea of what to expect. Even though Kanashimi had made her elder sister out to be a formidable foe, he was supremely confident in his ability to turn the situation to his advantage.

In any other scenario, the master general might have been justified in his assessment, but only Kanashimi knew that, and she wasn't about to put a damper on him. She needed all of his confidence for what was coming.

"Benitora, the next time you allow yourself to get turned into something without opposable thumbs, I am _not_ carrying your crap for you!" Yuya huffed, "This damn thing weighs a ton and I... oh, dammit!"

Sasuke had to side-step quickly as Yuya tripped on a projection in the uneven road, nearly braining him with the haft of Benitora's hassun as she tried simultaneously to right herself and keep a grip on the weapon, Benitora's clothes, _and_ Akira.

"Gomen, Sasuke-kun!" Yuya apologized immediately before turning a baleful glare on Benitora, who yipped and danced away from her.

_"It's not like I tripped you or anything! Besides, I wasn't the one who decided to carry all my stuff; that was all you, Yuya-han!"_

"You're unbelievable," Kyo snorted, coming up behind the scarlet-faced Yuya and jerking the hassun from her grasp, "I'm surprised you've managed to survive this long, given how klutzy you are."

"Oh, shut up!" Yuya snarled, "And I'm not klutzy!"

Kyo raised a sardonic eyebrow, which made Yuya so angry that steam practically came out of her ears. "Shut up!" she snapped again, "I can take care of myself! Just give me a second!" Without further ado, she stuffed Akira feet-first into the front of her obi and then retied Benitora's clothing bundle with her hair ribbon so that she could carry it slung over one shoulder like a purse. She thrust her hand out for the hassun, glaring darkly at Kyo.

"Tch, like I'm going to give this back to you after you've already proved you're too feckless to control it," Kyo said. Not giving Yuya another chance to protest, he walked on ahead, his katana slung over his shoulder while he carried the hassun easily in his other hand. "And don't do that to Akira; he has it bad enough without being pressed up against your flat chest as it is," he called over his shoulder.

"_Flat chest?!_" Yuya fairly shrieked. Her hand went for her revolver, only to find it stopped by Okuni.

"Listen to me, you stupid girl!" Okuni hissed, her dark eyes flashing, "Can't you see that Kyo-sama has decided to help you, even though you didn't ask for it?!"

Yuya blinked, so taken aback that the expletive she had prepared died before it reached her lips. Her eyes flicked to Kyo, who kept walking, seemingly oblivious. _'Kyo, helping me? That can't be it...can it?'_

Okuni noted the confusion overtaking the anger on Yuya's face. "You really are ignorant of why he does what he does, aren't you," she observed, almost to herself. As it was, Okuni was only too aware of what Kyo's latest attentions toward this shrieking, under-developed snip of a girl portended. _'Even if she's like Sakuya at heart, she's so different in other ways, I can't even begin to fathom why...'_ The fallen miko let go of Yuya's wrist and flounced away with a superior sniff.

"Okuni-san..." Yuya stared after her in bewilderment. Then she shook her head vigorously. _'I don't know what she thinks she's trying to do, talking like that! As if Kyo has the _slightest_ interest in me, other than as a sake fund!'_

Her perceptions set to right once more, Yuya pulled Benitora's clothing bundle over one shoulder and took Akira out of her obi with her free hand. "Gomen ne, Akira-san," she said, looking down at him, "I wasn't thinking. I hope you won't hold that against me." _'And I don't care what Kyo says, I'm hardly flat-chested!'_ she added to herself, unconsciously crossing her arms over her chest.

If Benitora was displeased by Akira's new and advantageous proximity to Yuya's (ahem!) _assets_, there was another person equally displeased by the spike in the transformed swordsman's ki that broadcasted his acute awareness of just where he was.

_'Why on earth is Kyo-sama growling like that?'_ Okuni wondered, sparing the object of her obsession a puzzled glance. She noted the white-knuckled grip on both his katana and Benitora's hassun and pursed her full lips.

"Oi, someone's coming!" Sasuke hissed, stopping in his tracks as his hackles rose. Despite his constant maligning of his unfortunate comrade, the young onimitsu carefully set Saizo's pot on the road before reaching for his katana.

Unconsciously, everyone, excepting Kyo and Kanashimi, fell back toward each other, forming a defensive ring.

"I know this ki," Kyo announced, thrusting the tri-fold blade of Benitora's hassun into the dirt before unsheathing his own Muramasa. _'But there's something different about it...'_

"Well, it's not my onee-sama, so I think you guys can relax," Kanashimi suggested, even though she had her whip out and at the ready.

They all looked at her dubiously.

_Crack!_

The sound of a twig being stepped on was enough to alert Kyo to the attack. His head swerved in its direction as he brought his katana to bear...

...approximately .05 seconds too late to avoid getting cross-tackled by a very cute blonde little boy with metal studs in his ears.

"Kyo-nii-chan!" the little boy squealed delightedly, "I found you first, I win!"

"...the hell?" Kyo managed weakly, actually dropping his archetypal ultimate-bad-ass facade for a moment to gape in surprise. He pried the pre-schooler off his torso and hauled him up in mid-air by one arm. "Hotaru?"

"Yup!" the formerly-blasé-fire-wielding-swordsman-now-apparently-turned-into-a-hyperactive-four-year-old agreed happily. "I found you first, I win!"

"It seems Kanashimi's onee-sama has claimed another victim," Yukimura observed grimly.

"Forget turning Saizo into a potted plant, that's just sick!" Sasuke mumbled, only to be nearly deafened by Yuya's shriek of "Oh my God, he's so _CUTE!"_

The bounty huntress broke ranks and ran over to where Kyo was still dangling the chibified Hotaru in a state of shock. "Can I hold him, _please?!_" she begged Kyo.

Wordlessly, Kyo passed Hotaru (still shouting "I found Kyo-nii-chan first, I win!" at the top of his lungs) to her, whereupon Yuya glomped the chibi so tightly Hotaru wheezed and gasped for air (he also stopped shouting, which was a plus). "Eeeeee, I can't believe a cute little boy like you is out wandering around the forest completely alone!" Yuya exclaimed.

"Apparently she didn't hear a word about him being Hotaru," Okuni noted snidely.

_"Hey, Yuya-han, stop hugging him like that!"_ Benitora barked. He noticed that Yuya had had the presence of mind to keep a firm hold on Akira despite her ecstatic reaction to chibi-Hotaru. _'I'm the only one being left out of that hug! No fair!'_ he thought.

"Ne, Hotaru-chan," Kanashimi said, after gently disengaging Yuya's near chokehold on the poor kid, "What did you mean when you said, 'I found Kyo-nii-chan first, I win'?"

"I found him first, so I won!" Hotaru said brightly. He promptly stuck his thumb in his mouth, causing Yuya to gush over how cute he was once again, while Sasuke and Benitora tried not to gag; even Yukimura looked slightly ill from the overdose of kawaii-ness.

The corner of Kanashimi's left eye twitched ever-so-slightly. "What. Did. You. Win?" she asked very slowly and very patiently.

Hotaru popped his thumb out of his mouth, his dazed, vacant expression more attuned with his normal persona. "She didn't say," he finally said, frowning. Then he shrugged. "Doesn't matter, I won the race!"

"Who's "she"?" Yukimura inquired next, laying a restraining hand on Kanashimi's shoulder to prevent her from trying to throttle Hotaru.

"I dunno, but she said she's my new friend," Hotaru answered glibly. His sharp green eyes caught sight of Sasuke's ball-and-cup toy. "Ooo, can I play with that?!"

"No," Sasuke said in an incredibly abrupt and irritated voice, the corner of his left eye twitching.

"You're mean!" Hotaru observed, and proceeded to start bawling at pitch that left Benitora rolling in the dirt in agony.

_"Make him stop, make him stop, make him stoooooooooooooooooop!"_ Benitora begged, howling pitifully.

Yuya finally succeeded in calming Hotaru down by letting him hold Akira-usagi and convincing Sasuke to let the chibified swordsman play with his toy ("You're the older boy, that makes you responsible for being the mature one!")

"Bullshit, Hotaru's easily six years older than me!" Sasuke pointed out, but he surrendered the item under Yuya's wilting glare and Yukimura's casually raised eyebrow.

It was only after Hotaru was gleefully absorbed in the toy that anyone noticed Okuni had gone missing.

"She's escalating," Kanashimi was saying to Yukimura, "Before, onee-sama was only changing the outward appearance of her victims; now it seems like she's changing their fundamental nature too."

Yukimura's lips thinned as he processed Kanashimi's evaluation. "I cannot but agree with you, Kanashimi-san," he replied, "Now we must be doubly on the lookout or risk..."

"Where's Okuni?" Kyo asked suddenly, after finally managing to tear his disbelieving eyes away from chibi-Hotaru. He scanned the area, probing with his ki when he could not catch sight of the fallen miko.

"Okuni-san?" Yuya asked, startled. She also looked around for Okuni. "She was standing right behind me, just before Hotaru-chan appeared..."

Kyo flinched slightly at the endearment she added to his former comrade's name, but otherwise kept up his search.

_"Hey, hey, guys! I think I could probably sniff her out!"_ Benitora contributed.

"Good idea, Benitora," Kanashimi said, "Go get her, boy, go get her! Fetch the miko!"

Benitora gave her a Look that would have been accompanied by an obscene hand gesture had his current physiology allowed it, and then set to work. Retracing their steps, he quickly found the most recent scent markers left by the miko. "Wa-choo!" _'Dang it, that woman wears too much perfume!'_

_'Unless the earth simply swallowed her when I wasn't looking, I should be able to sense her!'_ Kyo thought, frowning. It was not that he was worried about the annoying woman, of course; he simply did not appreciate the fact that his superior senses had been confounded.

"I'm sure Benitora can find her, Kyo, don't worry," Yuya said at just that moment, noticing the way Kyo seemed to radiate tension.

Kyo's face dead-panned as he looked at her.

"Do you think it's possible your onee-sama managed to lure her away while we were otherwise occupied?" Yukimura asked Kanashimi out of the side of his mouth as he followed Benitora's progress with his eyes.

Kanashimi blinked. "I should hope not," she said, "Otherwise that means she's found a way to mask her ki, even from me." Kanashimi shuddered at the mere thought.

"Hm." Yukimura was beginning to wonder if even _he_ had underestimated their adversary...

_"She went this way!" _Benitora announced excitedly as Okuni's scent trail suddenly veered off the road into the forest, _"Come on, you guys, she might be in some serious trouble!"_ Baying like a bloodhound, he dove into the undergrowth, in hot pursuit of his quarry.

"Benitora no baka!" Yuya shouted after him, "Don't run off like that, you might...!"

"Great, now we have to chase after the idiot to make sure he doesn't hurt himself," Sasuke groused, picking up Saizo and starting after Benitora.

"No choice," Yukimura sighed, "We can't allow anyone to get separated from the rest of the group or we risk losing another member of our party." He grinned sardonically at the remaining companions and gestured to the forest. "Shall we?" he said, as though asking if they wanted to enter a particular restaurant.

"We who are about to die..." Kanashimi intoned as they stepped off the road into the gloaming shadows. Only Yukimura was amused.

-------------------------------

_"Okuni-han?__ Okuni-han, where the heck are you?"_ Benitora called, circling the small clearing for the nth time. He had followed the woman's scent for a fair clip when, suddenly, it had been overwhelmed by a strong alien scent that effectively short-circuited his sense of smell. _'And just when I was getting used to it, too,'_ he thought regretfully, sneezing and snorting in an attempt clear his nasal passages.

A rustle in the underbrush made him pause; it might have been only a squirrel or some other forest animal.

_"Okuni-han?"_

There was some more rustling, followed by something that could only be a very soft, very human cry of dismay.

_'That settles it!'_ Former caution forgotten, Benitora raced forward, diving through the branches with a howl of _"Don't worry, Okuni-han, I found ya!"_

The high-pitched scream ripped through the forest, scattering the birds from their tree-top perches...

--------------------------------

"Okuni-san!" Yukimura whirled, trying to determine the direction from which the fading scream had come.

"This way!" Kyo shouted, already plunging headlong into the dense stand of saplings and intertwined brambles to their left.

Sasuke, who had been making his way above their heads by going from tree branch to tree branch (quite nimbly despite his hold on Saizo), cursed and leaped down to earth. "Here, you take him!" he ordered Yuya, thrusting the pot into her hands before disappearing after Kyo.

"Didn't you just say that it was a good idea for us to stick together to avoid getting picked off one-by-one?" Kanashimi asked Yukimura as she gazed stolidly after the pair.

"Aa," Yukimura sighed, "But I suppose if anyone is to go off alone, those two can take the best care of themselves."

"Need I remind you that I whupped Kyo in less than five seconds because I got the drop on him?"

Yukimura swore internally before plastering a rather strained smile on his face as he asked Yuya, "Shall I take Saizo from you, Yuya-san?"

"Please do!" Yuya replied emphatically, handing Saizo off. "Come here, Hotaru-chan, Yuya-nee-san's going to give you a piggy-back ride!"

"Yay!" Hotaru cheered, clambering up on her proffered back.

"He's got such short legs, he wouldn't be able to keep up running through those thorns," Yuya explained to Kanashimi and Yukimura, who were watching the bizarre tableau with deceptively blank faces.

"Um...okay," Kanashimi said neutrally.

Muttering something about "maternal instincts" and stifling the urge to laugh his head off, Yukimura quickly led what remained of their party through the rending thorns so skillfully, not even the trailing hem of a kimono was caught among them.

"Kyo-san! Sasuke!" he hailed as he caught sight of them, standing in a clearing only a little ways ahead.

Kyo looked over his shoulder as the group jogged up to him. Upon noticing Hotaru clinging to Yuya's back like a baby koala, the corner of his left eye twitched ever-so-slightly.

"You shouldn't have just run off like that!" Yuya admonished him, ignoring the look he was giving her, "Didn't Yukimura-san just say...!"

"Oh my goodness, Yuya-san!" a well-cultured, astonished voice shrilled, "How could you...?! That's absolutely scandalous!"

"Eh?" Yuya managed before she was enveloped in a flurry of red and white cloth and a voice clucking, "...showing that much leg, in public no less! Shameless!" Someone attempted to yank out the kilted fold that kept the hem of her kimono just below her knees.

"Okuni-san, what the hell are you doing?!" Yuya demanded above Hotaru's loud yelps of surprise as she tried to fend off the miko.

"But, Yuya-san, you're simply... inappropriate!" Okuni gasped, backing away with a hurt, offended air, "I'm just trying to help!"

"Eh?" Yuya repeated, torn between righteous indignation and just-plain-weirded-out. She took a good look at Okuni and noticed that something was... different. "Okuni-san... what happened to your clothes?"

"Nothing whatsoever!" Okuni sniffed huffily, bringing the collar of her kimono more snugly about her throat, "Imagine, I woke up to discover Benitora _drooling_ over me, but small wonder, seeing as my clothes were _hanging_ off of me most inappropriately! Oh!" She gasped, clapping a hand over her mouth and coloring bright red as she surveyed the gathering that stared back at her in complete shock. "To imagine that I embarrassed myself in such a manner, for so long! I forbid any of you men to think about how slatternly I presented myself! And Yuya-san, really, don't you think you should lengthen your kimono?"

"Sweet shade of Betty Page!" Kanashimi blurted, wide-eyed, "Okuni's been turned into a prude!"

"I am merely being modest, as befits a miko!" Okuni retorted sharply.

_"Since when do _you_ care about that, Okuni-han? Snap out of it, you're scaring me!"_ Benitora yowled, while Kyo and Yuya stared, pole-axed.

"This is bad, this is a bad bad thing..." Sasuke muttered dazedly.

"That might be a bit of an understatement, Sasuke-kun," Yukimura said, regarding Okuni with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

"She's gone too far," Kanashimi declared, narrowing her eyes to mere slits, "Onee-sama, you simply don't mess with fan-service and get away with it. From here on out, this means _war_!"

-----------------

**Author's Note:** I make reference to a haiku composed by Issa (1762 – 1826) that reads (translated):

_The young sparrows_

_return__ into Jizo's sleeve_

_for__ sanctuary_

No real purpose in it, other than to have fun with Migeira's near-absolute pre-cognizance.


	3. Mean, Median Madness

Narrator here. Now, before you kill me, I have good reason for not updating _Intermezzo _lately…

**Kanashimi** She procrastinated on two major school projects that she needs to complete in order to graduate. And she got writer's block.

**Narrator:** (glare) You forgot to mention that I worked two jobs in the meantime, one of which only ended because tax season's over!

**Kanashimi** … and you got writer's block.

**Narrator:** (--) _Must _you keep harping on that?

**Disclaimer:** Please apply the Supreme Court's "rational person" test to this fic: if Narrator writes _fanfiction_, would a _rational person_ assume that she claims to own _Samurai Deeper Kyo?_

**Kanashimi: **But then, would a "rational person" read this _and_ be amused by it?

**Narrator: **… shut up.

* * *

**Chapter 3: Mean, Median... Madness**

"Even if all these transformations wouldn't result in the universe falling apart," Sasuke noted somewhat philosophically, "We're all pretty much committed to stopping your sister."

"Hm? Why would that be?" Kanashimi asked, looking up from the now-tepid bowl of miso she had been stirring boredly with her chopsticks. She had been the one to insist that they all find an inn for the night, saying that it made no difference where they were. If Narrator was determined to find them, she would, and if it was all the same to them, she would rather have a nice clean futon to sleep on.

"Because I have to hear the Tokugawa idiot bark one more time, or chase after Hotaru because he wandered away again, or listen to another of Okuni's etiquette lectures, or get one more weird look because I'm carting around a friggin' _fern_," here Sasuke's left eye began twitching, "_I'M GOING TO LOSE IT!_" This declaration was punctuated by Sasuke slamming his fist down on the table, making the dishes jump. Hotaru spilled his tea on Okuni's lap out of surprise and the miko ran from the common room, shrieking that she had to "clean my kimono before the stain sets!"

"Hmph! You're getting plenty of weird looks now, thanks to your shouting," Yuya told him sternly, before turning back to Hotaru to calm him down and pour him some more tea, "And besides, poor Benitora has to spend the night outside as it is, since no inn would let in a dog, so just be glad _you_ don't have to!"

Sasuke glared but otherwise did nothing more than resume his seat, grumbling darkly.

"It's unexpected, but it seems that Yuya-san has the makings of an exemplarily mother, ne Kyo-san?" Yukimura remarked conversationally, "She's doing an excellent job looking after Hotaru-san."

Other than nearly choking on the sake he had just downed, Kyo very purposefully did not react to Yukimura's "casual" observation.

"Why don't you know where she is!" Sasuke demanded, pointing at Kanashimi, "You're her sister, dammit! Why can't you keep track of her!"

"I'm not my onee-sama's keeper, that's why," Kanashimi retorted, throwing her chopsticks down and glaring at Sasuke, "I'm not about staple myself to her leg so I can keep her out of trouble – I have my own life to live, kiddo!"

"Maa, maa, we're not denying that," Yukimura interjected, once more leaping into the role of peacekeeper between his subordinate and their new "ally," "We're all simply stressed from dealing with this unusual situation."

"No, no, Hotaru-chan, don't eat that, it fell on the floor!" Yuya admonished, grabbing Hotaru's hand before he could snatch up a particularly plump umeboshi that had rolled off his tray.

"Awwwwww...!" Hotaru's face pinched, harbinger to an ear-splitting temper tantrum. Yuya headed him off by quickly transferring one of her own umeboshi onto his plate.

"Hm, quite," Kanashimi said, "Now, back to the matter at hand. I'll admit that I was caught by surprise today…" Kyo snorted and Kanashimi glared at him before continuing, "but now that we've gotten a moment to stop and think, we should be able to figure out a way to stop my onee-sama."

"Perhaps our best plan is to invite her to attack us," Yukimura spoke up.

"What the hell would we accomplish by doing that?" Kyo demanded while everyone else stared at Yukimura incredulously.

"I'd think we'd be better off trying to figure out how to keep her from finding us," Yuya added, "There's no telling who'll she'll go after next, and what they'll be turned into!"

"Since we're bound to be attacked by Kanashimi-san's onee-sama no matter what we do, and since it seems that Kanashimi-san is unable to predict the next attack any more accurately than the rest of us, it stands to reason that the only option left is to arrange an opportunity for an attack by which we will not be taken off guard," Yukimura demurred.

"Ya know, I keep forgetting how smart you can be," Kanashimi observed with wry grin, "It's like coming upon a frat boy who can discuss Jane Austen coherently."

"Er, yes, thank you for that assessment," Yukimura said with a touch of puzzlement.

"So the plan is to set up a trap for an insane, omnipotent, skillet-wielding psycho-girl," Sasuke summed up, "That's brilliant, only how the hell are we supposed to get her to fall for it?"

"I have no idea," was Yukimura's cheerful answer.

Only Kyo managed to keep his seat, but just barely.

"I was hoping Kanashimi-san would be so kind as to give us an idea of how to draw out her onee-sama," Yukimura clarified after a moment.

"You could have said that to begin with," Kanashimi said sourly, gingerly touching the tender bump on her forehead, "And since you're asking for my advice on bait… I'd say the best would have been either Akira or Benitora gift-wrapped and left in the middle of a road for her to find…"

"What?" Yuya interrupted, sounding slightly horrified. She belatedly covered the ears of the stuffed bunny rabbit currently residing in her lap.

"Those are the two bishies she favors," Kanashimi elaborated, "One of the best ways to distract a rampaging authoress is to throw her a bishy to glomp. My onee-sama is as much a screaming fangirl as the next otaku."

"Even if we were to be so pragmatic as to use our companions in such a manner," mused Yukimura, "that option is not available to us, given Akira-san and Tora-san's present states."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Kanashimi replied dolefully, "It's almost like she went after them from the get-go so that I couldn't stop her by the usual means."

"'Usual means'?" Sasuke echoed, "You mean, this has happened before?"

"Uh-huh." Kanashimi nodded and pursed her lips, frowning. "Only never anything on the scale of her trying to destabilize an alternate reality. Ya'll are just a lucky first."

"We're honored, I'm sure," Yukimura said somewhat sarcastically.

"So what bait _were_ you planning on using?" demanded Kyo.

"Um..." Kanashimi thought hard. Suddenly, she banged on the table, a broad grin on her face. "I got it! Sugar!"

"...what?" was the general response.

"What I just said, sugar!" Kanashimi repeated in an exasperated voice, "If we can't bait her with bishies, we got to bait her with the next best thing: sugar! Preferably chocolate."

"_Cho-ko-re-tto_?" Sasuke echoed.

Kanashimi winced. "Oh yeah, forgot which timeline this is. Damnit! Onee-sama _would _have to be a fan of historic fiction - stupid anachronistic limitations!" She subsided into disgruntled, incoherent muttering.

"Well, if Kanashimi-san says sugar will do the trick, perhaps the best thing to do is to wait until morning when the candy vendors in the marketplace open and buy some then," suggested Yukimura.

"Well, don't look at me to foot _that_ bill," said Yuya, "I'm already fronting Kyo's sake as it is." She looked sharply at the samurai, who chose to ignore her. Yuya huffed, but successfully resisted the urge to fling something at his head. Then something occurred to her. "Let's say we actually manage to catch her, what are we supposed to do next?"

"That's obvious," Kyo snorted.

"We kill her," Sasuke added, as though it was inherently evident.

"Uh, no, bad idea, hon," Kanashimi interjected, "For one, if you kill the authoress, the alternate reality she created will also be destroyed."

"... and that's bad how?" Kyo asked.

"Essentially, it would be the same thing as if we allow her to do what she's doing now – complete melt-down of the fabric of space-time. She's already made herself an integral part of this universe by altering it," Kanashimi explained, "Besides, she needs to be alive to reverse everyone's transformations and set the continuum of reality back on course, since she's the only one who can do it."

"I suppose that makes sense," Yukimura said with a sigh; secretly, he had been wondering if there really was a downside to offing an authoress run amok.

"And then there's the fact that she's my onee-sama, and I'd be _really_ pissed at anyone who seriously tried to hurt her," Kanashimi added sweetly, baring her teeth at Sasuke in a parody of a smile.

"Whatever," Sasuke responded, rolling his eyes.

"So, if we can't kill her, what do we do?" Yuya insisted.

"Disarm her," Kanashimi said, "If you guys can help me distract and/or immobilize her long enough, Kyo or Yukimura could get the iron skillet from her."

"Skillet? Is that the source of her power?" Yukimura asked.

Kanashimi nodded. "Yeah, pretty much; she'd still have her authoress powers, but I think once we get the skillet from her, she'll go back to normal."

"Well, normal for her, at least," she added after a beat.

"Tch, and here I thought this was going to be difficult," Kyo drawled, "I'll disarm her, no problem."

"So long as you aren't being literal, do as you like, Kyo-honey," Kanashimi replied off-handedly, secretly wondering if the Law of Hubris and Famous Last Words was in effect. (It was.)

Yuya stood up from the table. "Since it seems we've figured out something resembling a plan for tomorrow," she said, picking up a bowl of fresh rice and cold chicken teriyaki that had somehow escaped everyone's notice, "I'm going outside to bring 'Tora his dinner."

"Excellent idea, Yuya-san," Yukimura chirped, "We wouldn't want Tora-san getting in trouble for trying to raid the kitchen on his own."

"Want to come with, Hotaru-chan?" Yuya offered.

"Yeah!" Hotaru cheered enthusiastically, abandoning the remnants of his dinner, "I want to play with the baka-inu-Tora-san!"

Noticing the strange looks she was getting, Yuya mouthed, _'He needs a bath,'_ as she made a slight gesture at Hotaru's dirt-and-food-smeared face (apparently, Hotaru's transformation had affected his motor-skills as much as his psychology). Out loud she said, "If anyone wants me, I'll be in my room later. Let's go, Hotaru-chan."

"Hai, Yuya-nee-san!"

"That was almost disgustingly cute," Kanashimi observed once Yuya and Hotaru were out of earshot, "You'd almost think they were really brother and sister."

"Kanashimi-san, please do not feel obligated to share observances like that in the future," Yukimura said with a purposefully neutral expression. Kyo and Sasuke were less successful in containing their abject revulsion.

"All right, all right, jeez!" Kanashimi complained, "Not like I said that they could be mother and son with the way Yuya's going so far as to give him a bath and..."

"What?" Kyo managed.

"You don't really expect a four-year-old who managed to face-plant himself in the _only_ mud puddle between here and Kyoto to be able to deal with his own hygiene do you?" Kanashimi retorted sarcastically to Kyo's suddenly vacant chair. There were shouts of surprise from other patrons who were caught off-guard by a swiftly-moving black blur and the sound of something akin to a miniature sonic boom.

"You did that on purpose, didn't you?" Yukimura noted dryly.

"Who, me?" was Kanashimi's "innocent" response.

----------------------

"This is stupid," Sasuke muttered, shifting slightly in the undergrowth.

"Well, if you have a better plan, kiddo, let's hear it!" Kanashimi snapped. It was harder for her, being taller than Sasuke, to remain crouched down and concealed by the brush that was their current observation point. It certainly did not help that _everyone_ was sharing the same hiding place.

"Do you _really_ expect your onee-sama to walk right into that?" Yuya asked anxiously for about the hundredth time in the last hour, "I mean, it's just a rope trap covered with leaves and some dango in the middle of it for bait. Even the stupidest of bounties I've hunted down would never fall for that one."

"Let's try to think positively, shall we?" Yukimura suggested, "If Kanashimi-san thinks this is the best way to trap her onee-sama, we should at least give it a try."

"In the meantime, we're squatting here in the _dirt _and the _filth _like _savages!_" Okuni complained mightily, "This is such inappropriate activity for a lady of breeding!"

"And what breeding would that be, fox-bitch?" Kyo asked sarcastically.

Okuni started crying.

"Kyo, stop doing that! That's the third time this morning!" Yuya scolded, while trying to comfort the sobbing miko.

Kyo sputtered incoherently for a bit before subsiding into morose silence. How the hell was he supposed to remember that Okuni's personality transplant was apparently extraordinarily sensitive to insults?

_"Not to be a master of the obvious or anything, but I don't think _anything's_ going to be walking into that trap with the noise you're making!"_ Benitora yipped grumpily. Having to sleep outside while everyone had enjoyed at night in a comfortable lodge house had wreaked havoc with his normally sunny disposition. Hotaru had not improved matters by making a game of pulling at his trailing ears at every opportunity.

Speaking of Hotaru...

Benitora groaned. _"Oi, Kanashimi-han, Hotaru's wandered away again!"_

"What? Oh, for the love of... Yuya, I thought you were keeping an eye on Hotaru-chan!"

"Huh?" Yuya worked her way free of Okuni in order to look around their cramped quarters. It did not take long to confirm that, yet again, the chibified fire-wielder had slipped away from their company unnoticed. "Kyo, why weren't you paying attention?"

"Me? You're the one whose acting like his adopted sister, you're the one who's supposed to take care of him!" Kyo shot back angrily.

"Oh, so you only take charge of him when it's convenient, do you!" Yuya demanded, "Then why in hell did you get so upset last night when...!"

"And there they go again," Sasuke groaned, holding his head in his hands as Kyo and Yuya began an all-out bickering match.

"You'd think one streaking incident on the part of Hotaru-san wouldn't be such a hot-button topic with those two," Yukimura remarked placidly, trying to imagine that he was in a better place, where people did not discuss the proper care of swordsmen-turned-pre-schoolers at the top of their lungs.

"Meh, you'd think Kyo would have at least known about Hotaru's exhibitionist tendencies," Kanashimi grumbled. Then again, it was not really anyone's fault that Hotaru had suddenly discovered the only part about the process of bathing that he liked was the part right before one actually entered the water or that he could be down-right greased lightening if he put his mind to it. "Of course, the whole reason Yuya's so upset was because Kyo took it upon himself to burst into the women's bath uninvited like a complete pervert."

"Ah, but he was only trying to prevent Hotaru-san's embarrassment," Yukimura countered in Kyo's defense. Kyo and Yuya's "discussion" had by this point degenerated into immature name-calling in which Okuni was (ineffectively) trying to intervene by pointing out to Yuya that "young ladies simply are not supposed to say things like that!"

Kanashimi rolled her eyes at Yukimura. "Yeah right; I'm betting he just didn't want anyone seeing anything good before _he_ got the chance to," she said pointedly, "Not like Hotaru would get embarrassed about it, even when he was normal. Or at least, not chibified."

"Perhaps," Yukimura allowed, not seeing any point in pursuing the argument.

"Where are you going?" Kyo sneered as Yuya abruptly cut off mid-expletive and got to her feet (or hands and knees - the branches _were_ really low).

"I'm being the responsible adult here and going out to look for Hotaru-chan!" Yuya snapped, "Benitora, come on, I'm going to need your help!"

_"Hai, Yuya-han!" _Benitora agreed happily, thrilled both for the opportunity to escape their hidey-hole and that Yuya had asked for _his_ help in particular.

"Ano, what if Kanashimi-san's onee-sama attacks them while they are separated from us?" Okuni asked, a slight tone of concern in her voice. Kyo was too busy glaring after the young bounty huntress and Benitora to notice.

"I don't think that's going to happen, Okuni," Kanashimi answered.

Yukimura raised an eyebrow as he looked at her. "And how can you be so certain?"  
"Because," she said, pointing toward the clearing where they had laid the trap, "my onee-sama just stepped into our little snare."

"_That's_ your older sister?" Sasuke demanded, certain Kanashimi was playing a trick on them. How could it be possible that the little pink-pig-tailed girl, hanging upside down from the tree branch (courtesy of the loop of rope around her left ankle), gleefully devouring their offering of dango, be the cause of the nightmare of the last twenty-four hours?

"Appearances can be deceiving, Sasuke," Yukimura murmured in a low voice as he gauged their opponent with cold, narrowed eyes; it was as though he had read Sasuke's mind.

"All right, here's how it goes," Kanashimi said briskly, "I'll approach her first and see if I can't just get her to surrender."

They all stared at her incredulously.

Kanashimi shrugged. "It's worth a shot. At least I can distract her while the three of you try to flank her and..."

"Three?" Okuni interrupted, "But there are four of us!"

Kanashimi dead-panned. "So you're saying you're willing to risk a broken nail to fight with us?"

Okuni looked offended. "Certainly not! I was just saying that there were four of us besides you and that it is rude to discount a person who is sitting right in front of you!"

If strangling Okuni would not have resulted in noise, Kanashimi would have done it without second thought. As it was, she settled for glaring at the miko. "As I was saying, I'll distract onee-sama, the three of you try to gang up on her and take the skillet away."

"I don't see a skillet," Sasuke pointed out.

"It'll show up, trust me," Kanashimi said ominously, "So you guys got that? Yukimura?"

"Hai."

"Sasuke?"

"Whatever, let's just do this!"

"Kyo?"

"..."

"Kyo?"

"Where's Kyo-san?" Yukimura asked, looking over his shoulder in surprise.

"Over there. Guess he wasn't much for your plan, Kanashimi," Sasuke said with vicious smugness. He pointed at the demon-eyed samurai, who was currently standing in front their target, his unsheathed Tenro glittering dangerously in the sunlight.

"Oh, crap!" Kanashimi half-shrieked, shoving Sasuke's face into the dirt as she shot to her feet, "Forget the plan, we have to go rescue Kyo!" Her whip suddenly materialized in her hand and she was off like a shot.

"Should we follow her and back Kyo up?" Sasuke wanted to know as he picked his face up out of the dirt and slowly wiped it off. Despite his calm, even tone, he was now "severely pissed."

Yukimura shrugged and sighed. "Might as well," he said, crawling out of the bracken, "But I think Kanashimi-san had the right idea about the flank attack..."

**_Rewind, Two Minutes Ago..._**

"_That's_ your older sister?" Kyo heard Sasuke demand in disbelief. He stopped glaring out the way Yuya and Benitora had gone after Hotaru long enough to register the sight of a chibi-authoress suspended in mid-air before making up his mind.

While Kanashimi babbled about some coordinated attack or other (as if – Onime no Kyo taking part in a team strategy?), he slipped out of their cover and began approaching his next victim.

_'This ends now,'_ he thought. He had been sorely inconvenienced thanks to the transformation of one of his servants and his former comrade and the attention Yuya had lavished on both. If _anyone_ was going to be the center of (Yuya's) attention, it would be _him_, dammit!

A vague impression that he ought to be worried about Kanashimi's reaction if he did actually kill Narrator like he planned tugged at his conscience but he ignored it easily. Stopping within the optimal _maai_ of the source of his annoyance, he regarded her, trying to measure just how dangerous she was. She ignored him, obliviously chomping down on the sweets with table manners that rivaled chibi-Hotaru's for sheer inelegance.

And then her wide pink eyes fixated on him and Kyo began to appreciate the fact that Kanashimi just might have been telling the truth. The sheer manic depravity that shone in them unnerved him, as did the chill thrill of dark power indescribable in its breadth.

_'I'm in trouble,'_ Kyo admitted privately to himself, but he quickly thrust that thought aside and raised Tenro.

"Type I error due to assumption of relationship where null hypothesis exists," she hissed through a fanged grin before vanishing.

"Kyo, behind you!" Kanashimi screamed.

Kyo slewed around and brought Tenro up in a high guard just in time to deflect a vicious blow from a massive black iron skillet. The katana shivered at the force of the strike and almost jerked out of his grasp, but Kyo held on grimly and pushed back against the skillet.

"P-value based on degrees of freedom!" Narrator howled as she vaulted away, narrowly avoiding Kyo's lightening-quick counter-attack.

"Eep!" Kanashimi squeaked, diving out of the way of her onee-sama's wild trajectory.

_"MIZUCHI!"_

"Ack!" Kanashimi had to leap into a near-by tree to keep from being hit by the lethal _tachi-kaze_ attack that blasted through the clearing. "Bad Kyo!" she scolded, "Very bad! You're going to get a spanking for that!"

Kyo ignored her. His enemy had vanished again and he was too occupied trying to locate her to pay attention to threats from the irate young woman.

More's the pity, as Kanashimi _always_ makes good on her threats.

Pure instinct made Kyo throw himself off to one side, swinging his katana up in a high arc as the next attack came. The tip of his blade nicked the outer edge of the down-swinging skillet, just enough to deflect it into the ground to the side of his head.

"Error of the difference is significant," Narrator told him, her pink eyes mere slits in her face.

"So was your mistake," Kyo retorted, grinning wickedly as he thrust Tenro right into her chest...

...only to have it impact the skillet's flat bottom, which Narrator had brought up with inhuman reflexes to shield herself. The chibi-authoress-run-amok was flung back a good ten meters, slamming full-on into the very solid trunk of a tree.

"Get her!" Kanashimi called desperately, launching from the tree branch and flinging her whip out before her, "Kanashimi no Bishonen Subjugation Ryu, _Whip of Conquest_!"

"Critical value of x-squared insignificant," Narrator yelled, spinning into the air, "alternative hypothesis rejected!" She used Kyo's head as a spring board to meet her sister's next attack.

"Hm, looks like I'll have to involve myself after all," Yukimura noted from his ring-side seat, "I do hope Sasuke's ready..."

_'Dammit Yukimura, where the hell are you?'_ Sasuke wondered, impatient to contribute to the melee. Kanashimi was holding her own, but just barely, and Kyo was not doing much better from the look of things. But Yukimura had impressed upon him the utmost importance of the timing of their attack...

**_Meanwhile..._**

"Sheesh, for such a little guy with such short legs, Hotaru-chan got really far," Yuya said, "Are you _sure_ you're following his scent right, 'Tora?" The pair had gone pretty far into the woods in pursuit of chibi-Hotaru, and Yuya was beginning to get a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.

_"I'm positive, Yuya-han!"_ was Benitora's answer, though Yuya mainly guessed at the meaning behind the growls and low barks, _"I might be new at this scent-tracking thing, but I do know the scent of the little twerp who gets his jollies from yanking on my ears!"_

"What I'm really worried about is that Hotaru-chan might have dropped Akira-san somewhere," continued Yuya. She did not notice the way Benitora rolled his eyes or made a low growling noise in his throat. "I mean, he has rather a bit of a short attention span and doesn't always seem to be aware of his surroundings, and who knows what sort of messes he's wandered through..."

Babbling was one of Yuya's defense mechanisms. She had stomped off in a huff to prove a point to Kyo as well as to search for their missing charge. But anger at Kyo could only take her so far; even with Benitora at her side and Hotaru in need of finding, the fact that an omnipotent, cooking-ware-wielding, off-her-nut authoress was also somewhere out there made her down-right jumpy.

_"Oi, Yuya-han, I think we're getting really close!"_ Benitora, on the other hand, had the ability to focus single-mindedly on the task at hand and thus was not bothered by the same doubts and worries as his companion. Add that to the fact he sincerely enjoyed an opportunity to have her to himself (never mind the fact that they were looking for Akira and Hotaru!), Benitora was having a pretty darned good time of it. _"Matter of fact..."_

Benitora jogged ahead, jumping over a decaying log and forcing his way through some thick bracken. He found himself on a broad, gravel-strewn river bank, the unfiltered sunlight blinding after the green twilight of the forest. Behind him, Yuya scrambled to keep up, scolding, "Benitora, stop running off like that, you don't know what...!"

Just then, the wind shifted and Benitora caught a new scent, one that caused his hackles to instinctively rise with a thrill of impending danger. _"Yuya-han, don't come out here, it's...!"_

But Yuya had just caught sight of something that deafened her to his warning, even if she could understand it. "Hotaru-chan!" she screamed in horror, catching sight of the blond child chasing after a butterfly, half-way across a very narrow log hanging over the fast-moving and possibly very deep river. Without a thought, she forged ahead, trying desperately to reach him before...

The butterfly danced nimbly, always just out of reach. Hotaru barely registered the sound of Yuya's agonized shriek, his world wholly consumed by delicate sun-yellow wings. The butterfly swerved suddenly, dipping to his right and Hotaru automatically checked his course to follow it, blithely forgetting the width of his precarious bridge...

"_HOTARU-CHAAAAAAAN...!"_

Yuya had not even made it to the foot of the log "bridge" when she saw Hotaru swing wildly and begin to fall...

Benitora had already plunged into the (very) cold water immediately downstream, anticipating the rescue...

From the opposite bank, a large dark blur raced across the log and swept up Hotaru even as he fell, hurling itself into a rolling dive for the near bank as the log cracked in two and collapsed into the rushing water.

Yuya, who had just been about to run across, leapt back with a gasp of surprise and shock as a flying figure shrouded in flowing brown cloth fell to the ground almost at her feet.

"Wha...?"

"I am supposing, Shiina Yuya-san, that this child is a member of your company?" the figure spoke, raising blue-and-gold eyes to her surprised face as Hotaru struggled to worm his way free of the tangled mantle.

"Migeira... san?"

**_Meanwhile..._**

_'Here it goes.'_ Yukimura lifted his katana slightly, at just such an angle that the sunlight would glance over its length and be clearly seen by Sasuke, hiding in the shadows opposite him.

But more importantly...

"Ooooo, shiny!" Narrator chirped, her attention diverted by a glance of something bright and flashing out of the corner of her eye. Yukimura allowed himself a small grin of triumph - Kanashimi had alluded to what she called her onee-sama's "racoon instincts" and he had weighted his strategy on that one small, seemingly insignificant bit of information. The warm fluffy feeling Yukimura got from having his intelligence pay off was one of the tiny, secret pleasures in life.

Narrator's skillet wavered...

It was the opportunity Kanashimi had been waiting for. "_BY THE POWER OF BISHONEN DOMINATION, **KANASHIMI-CHIBI-TRANSFORM!"**_

Kyo narrowly avoided the ensuing wave of black smoke and ki as lightning crackled around Kanashimi, warping into a bright vortex of raw power. In seconds, Kanashimi was a mere fifth of her original size.

She need not really have bothered. Even as Narrator refocused her attention on her opponents, Yukimura and Sasuke launched themselves at her from opposite side of the clearing.

It was a brilliant attack, precisely coordinated and perfectly executed. The double lethality of the blades descending on Narrator _should_ have ended the battle then and there...

Except for the fact that Narrator was an authoress on a power trip. And she had her skillet.

**_BOOM!_**

"_Yukimura!_" Sasuke howled, recovering instantly. The shock wave had thrown him like a rag-doll, but his reflexes had saved him from plowing headlong into a tree trunk. But, somehow, Yukimura had not been so lucky. He was one split-second slower in regaining his footing, and by that time, Narrator was already screaming toward him, her manic evil cackle of victory frightening enough to stop the heart. _"YUKIMURAAAAAAAAAAAA...!"_

_'When I envisioned my death, it certainly wasn't this...'_ commented a vague particle of Yukimura's consciousness that was observing his impending doom from somewhere above the chaos of combat, _'Sanada Yukimura, the most feared enemy of shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu, defeated by cookware. How embarrassing.'_ It also noted, a nanosecond later, that a small dark figure had placed itself between him and the descending instrument and that this was probably significant. _'Sasuke...?'_

Sasuke... was between him and Narrator's skillet... Sasuke was going to be hit by the skillet... instead of him...

"Sasuke, no! SASUKE...!"

_KER-_**wham**!

------------------------

And that's where this chapter stops, because I'm evil and I have two term papers that need to be written in order for me to graduate.

**To My Reviewers:**

**luna-magic-2005** Yay, I'm charming and hilarious!

**Lady of Gensis:** Oh, I have plans for Kyo, yesssss… (rubs hands and cackles like the madwoman she is)

**Nekozuki**** 1776: **(stands up and shouts) I PROUDLY SUPPORT AKIRA/YUYA! (runs away screaming from a _very_ PO'd Onime no Kyo) And yes, Kanashimi is a great character. Now, if only she would use her powers for "justice" that involves only her own satisfaction…

(**Kanashimi** What would be the point of that?)

**foxmagic**… I do hope this chapter doesn't make you change your mind again.

**LadyWater2010: **Hurrah for the easily amused! As for the world of finals and mid-terms…**_TTTTHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHBBBBBBPPPPPPTTTT!_**

**starofhades** I'm glad my insanity is of amusement for someone. And I won't leave Benitora a dog forever… just a very long time. As for your request… er, that pairing would be more of a gag Yukimura would pull to mess with 'Tora's head. I think Saizo/Yukimura's more likely…

**Damien-chan:** I don't know if I'm going to touch Sakuya… it would involve more plot acrobatics than I care to put everyone through. As for Migeira… well, he's obviously back in the plot, ne? But now that you mention Shinrei, I might have to do something with him! (grin)

**Arin**** Ross/Arain:** I even have a fanart of chibi-Hotaru (and chibi-Akira). Just follow the link on my author's page to Minitokyo and go into my gallery. It's under the categories of "Samurai Deeper Kyo" and "Doujinshi."

(**Kanashimi** … did that reviewer just threaten me with a sword?

**Narrator:** Um… I think so.

**Kanashimi:** Hm. (pulls out roll of duct tape) Threat this.

**Narrator:** Arain-san… run.)

**Alyson Metallium: **Argh, you mentioned papers! _WHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!_ (sobs uncontrollably) But in any case, I hope this amused you! Hands off Akira-usagi: that boy is _MINE!_ I do have an _interesting _plan for Yuya of course… (snickers) Muahahahaha… AHAHAHAHAHAHA…! (gets thwapped by Kanashimi). Itai. And yes, again: statistics evil.

**animegrl1047: **Are you saying I have too much time on my hands? Because I don't! I simply have too much creative energy and love for the wonderful story that is _Samurai Deeper Kyo _that I feel compelled to express due to the fact that I chronically suffer insomnia! (begins frothing at the mouth)

(**Kanashimi: **(shoots Narrator with her patented Strait-Jacket Gun) I believe you're forgetting insane and obsessed in your comments, animegrl1047-san. As for how I treat Pookie… (shrugs) He never _says_ he doesn't like it.

**Narrator: **Kind of hard to say anything with a duct-tape gag over your mouth, isn't it!

**Kanashimi:** That reminds me… (slaps duct-tape over Narrator's mouth) Much better!

**Narrator: **(glare) Mmmpph grmph. (Translation: I hate you.)

**Kanashimi** (smiles and pats Narrator on the head))

**Sparky:** Mmmmgf huuuuerr gmpf ah iiiihhhhn um! (Translation: You're damn right it's not a bad thing; now help me get this damn duct-tape and strait-jacket off!)

**Darkened Mirrors:** Humphfl. (Translation: No kiddin'…)

Salute!


	4. Chisquare test of Significant Psychosis

Narrator here! After long last…

**Kanashimi: **Long, long, _long_ last…

**Narrator:** (deathglare) I humbly present the fourth chapter of _Statistically Speaking_. I do so hope you are amused by it.

**Kanashimi:** Yes, because if you're amused, you're less likely to try and hunt onee-sama down and thwack her for not updating more regularly.

**Narrator:** (deathglare x 1000) Stuff happens, like term papers, graduation, moving, and job-hunting, I'm sure they understand that!

**Kanashimi:** Mmmm-hmmm… right. You just keep telling yourself that, onee-sama. Right up to the point where that dragonsword comes down on your head.

**Narrator:** (soto voce) Stop giving them ideas, dammit!

* * *

**_Disclaimer: _**It's the same tired story, a thousand, thousand times told; saying we don't own _SDKyo_ sure gets friggin' old. 

**Kanashimi:** Wow, verse. I hope you didn't overexert your creative faculties and hurt yourself coming up with that.

**Narrator:** Listen, you…

------------------------

**Chapter 4: Chi-square Test of Significant Psychosis**

The echoes of Yukimura's desperate, anguished cry hung in the air like shards of glass; Sasuke fell against him heavily, a limp deadweight that caused him to stagger (though that might have been from mere shock). The master general noted almost in passing that Kyo and Kanashimi were converging on the person hovering above him, undiluted manic glee shining on her face.

"You are dead," he informed the authoress solemnly.

"Bifurcated data set with outlying unit... vulnerable," she responded before vanishing in a poof of green smoke.

"Bloody _hell!_" Kanashimi swore, stamping her diminutive foot and throwing down her whip in disgust. She glared angrily up at Kyo. "This is all your fault!" she shouted, her entire chibified form trembling with wrath, "How could you just go and challenge onee-sama directly like that! Didn't you hear me say that she's insane _and_ omnipotent! Threatening her to her face in her current state is like _begging_ for a cosmic bitch-slap! I swear, this is just further proof that testosterone is a neural inhibitor! Kyo-honey, sometimes you can be so...!"

Kanashimi realized belatedly that Kyo was not listening to a single word of her impassioned rant. Rather, he was staring blankly off into space. "Kyo-honey..." she growled warningly, an enormous roll of duct tape beginning to materialize in her tiny hand.

"She said 'outlying unit vulnerable'..." Kyo stated flatly. Without warning, he bolted, leaving Kanashimi coughing and sneezing in a cloud of dust.

"Marvelous, _now_ all of sudden he gets protective and concerned for his love interest. Kyo no baka!" she carped. Grumbling about idiotic males who let their swords do the balance of their thinking, Kanashimi turned to Yukimura and Sasuke. Immediately, her frustration with a certain empty-headed, demon-eyed samurai was forgotten. "Oi, Yukimura... you okay?" she asked worriedly.

Yukimura was sitting silently on the ground, Sasuke's unmoving body cradled in his arms. His head was lowered, his bangs veiling his face in a classic posture of grief. Kanashimi took a step toward him, hesitated, and then oh-so-gently reached out...

... grabbed Yukimura by the shoulders and shook him so hard his head rattled like a maraca. "Snap out of it, will you!" she ordered, "Onee-sama hit him with her skillet, she didn't kill him, for cripe's sake!"

"Wha...?" Yukimura managed, his eyes swirling in his head.

Kanashimi harrumphed and released him. "Men!" she sighed in exasperation, peering down at Sasuke to determine the extent of the damage her dear elder sister's power had wreaked... and blinked in surprise. _'That's funny... other than that lump on his head where onee-sama whalloped him, he doesn't seem to have changed at all!'_

"It almost looks as though she only wanted to incapacitate him," she ventured. And yet... as Kanashimi continued to stare at the unconscious onimitsu, she could not deny that something about him felt... off. _'I can't put my finger on it, but...'_

Just then, Sasuke groaned, his hand immediately going to his abused forehead. "Itaiiiii... Kuso, what the hell hit me?" he mumbled. Something about his voice made Kanashimi's ears twitch.

_'No way... onee-sama couldn't possibly have...'_

"Sasuke?" Yukimura gasped, staring down at his young subordinate in amazement and cautious hope. "Sasuke!" he yelped happily, glomping the still-disconcerted boy without reserve, "You're all right! I thought I told you never to risk yourself like that again!"

"Augh!" Sasuke protested. Kanashimi's suspicions were confirmed.

"Um, Yukimura? I think onee-sama did something to him after all..."

However, Yukimura had already been enlightened to this fact, for, you see, there are certain things you tend to notice about people when you hug them tightly...

-----------------------------------------

"Migeira-san... what are you doing here?" Yuya repeated. The disaster of Hotaru's imminent dunking averted, she sat down heavily on the ground.

"Yuya-san, are you all right?" Migeira asked, setting Hotaru on his feet and kneeling beside the bounty huntress in concern.

_"Hey you jerk, get away from her!"_ a soaking Benitora yelped, charging out of the river with a great deal of splashing and barking. _"Don't you dare try to do anything to Yuya-han!"_ he growled, placing himself squarely between Yuya and Migeira. All Benitora had seen from his vantage point in the river was Migeira diving at Yuya and her suddenly falling down, so one could forgive his rather rude behavior.

"Benitora..." Yuya gasped.

"This... is Benitora-san?" Migeira asked in amazement as he regarded the large hound that was showing off his gleaming fangs to great effect.

"No, it's baka-inu-Tora-san!" Hotaru corrected, rattling off his favorite nickname for the long-suffering transformed warrior. He seemed none the less worse for wear; but then, Hotaru did have a track record for being out of the loop where most things were concerned.

"I do not intend Shiina Yuya-san any harm... Benitora-san," Migeira told the dog with complete seriousness.

_"Not while I'm here, you sure as hell won't!"_

"Benitora, it's all right, Migeira-san's not the enemy," Yuya reassured her canine companion. She looked at Migeira and inclined her head. "Thank you, Migeira-san, for coming to Hotaru-chan's rescue."

"You are welcome," Migeira replied, extending a hand to her, courteously helping her to her feet, "Yuya-san, forgive me for prying, but what are you doing out here alone?"

_"Oi, _I'm_ with her, you mask-wearin' white-haired freak bastard!"_ Benitora helpfully pointed out.

"Ano... we were chasing after Hotaru-chan," Yuya said, giving Benitora a stern look (she might not understand his barking, but she knew him well enough to guess when he was being rude), "He wandered away from us while we were..." Her eyes widened suddenly in dismay. "Kyo and the others! Shimatta, we left them to deal with Kanashimi's onee-sama!"

"... I beg your pardon?" Migeira asked.

"No time to explain, Migeira-san, but you should come with us! It's not safe here!" Yuya said, "Benitora, grab Hotaru-chan" (the chibi-swordsman, bored with "grown-up talk," had wandered back toward the river bank and was chucking pebbles into the water) "we've got to get back to the others before it's too late!"

Benitora needed no urging to grab Hotaru by the scruff of his collar and drag him, protesting mightily, away from the river.

"Hotaru-chan, do you still have Akira-san?" Yuya asked, praying that the oblivious child had not dropped his former comrade Kami-sama-knows-where.

Hotaru pulled Akira-the-Stuffed-Bunny-Rabbit out of his gi. "Hai!"

Yuya sighed in relief. "Why don't you let nee-san hold onto him for a bit, ne?" she asked, "We're going back to Kyo and everyone now."

Hotaru pouted his lip as he regarded her dubiously.

"I'll give you another piggy-back ride," Yuya suggested in near-desperation. Something horrific could be happening in their absence, but she was not about to leave anyone behind.

"I'll let you have Akira-usagi, but I want _him_ to give me a piggy-back ride!" Hotaru said, pointing up at Migeira.

"Eh?" Migeira was somewhat taken aback, and Benitora was only too happy to snicker at someone _else_ being discomfited by Hotaru.

"Migeira-san, could you please...?" Yuya asked him, looking up at him with unconsciously huge, melting doe-eyes.

Migeira coughed slightly. "I will do as you ask, Yuya-san," he said with deliberate gravity, "if you answer one question: is this child in fact Hotaru of the Mibu?"

"Yes, he is," Yuya replied in surprise, "How did you...?"

"No time," Migeira interrupted, reaching down with his one good arm and easily sweeping Hotaru up onto his shoulder, "but perhaps you have less explaining to do than you think."

_"What the hell does that mean?"_ Benitora demanded, but Yuya had already taken Akira from Hotaru and the group was heading back into the forest without him. _"Oi, Yuya-han, wait up! You shouldn't... oi!"_ With a frustrated growl, Benitora galloped after them.

-----------------------------------

_'Damn that woman, why'd she have to stomp off like that!'_ Kyo was thinking as he bent down to examine a patch of disturbed earth. He could have easily found Yuya and Benitora simply by seeking out the latter's ki and focusing on it, but for some reason, this ability was being blocked.

Kyo had a fairly good idea of who was behind it, and that did not make him any happier. As a matter of fact, a casual observer would have noted that he seemed to become more desperate as precious seconds ticked away. _'She just _asks_ for trouble with that damned temper of hers! And that insane little bitch going to find her and Benitora sure as shit won't be any help when it comes to...'_ With a violent oath, Kyo slammed the door on that particular train of thought and began loping along in what he was 96.4 certain was the correct direction...

--------------------------------

Kanashimi was starting to get irritated. Well, more irritated than she had been before, thanks to her dear onee-sama's rampage, her continuing success at evading capture, Kyo's latest bout of masculine idiocy, Life in general, etc., etc. Suffice it to say, the current situation was just icing on a gigantic Annoying-the-Hell-Out-of-Kanashimi cake.

"... _I'M GOING TO KILL HER! I AM GOING TO KILL THAT THRICE-DAMNED INSANE LITTLE WITCH! PAIN, LOT'S OF PAIN, INVOLVING SHARP STICKS AND MY KATANA! SHE'S GOING TO SUFFER FOR THIS! I'M GOING TO...!_"

Kanashimi coughed politely. "Ano, Sasuke...?" She dearly wished Yukimura would help her out, but since he was currently in the grips of a fairly solid state of shock-induced catatonia, she was on her own.

"_... SEND HER TO JIGOKU IN TINY LITTLE PIECES THAT EMMA-O WILL HAVE TO SIFT THROUGH ASHES TO FIND BECAUSE WHEN I'M DONE KILLING HER, I'M GOING TO BURN HER CORPSE WITH...!"_

Kanashimi decided she had finally had enough. "Right, then," she announced, striding up to the loudly ranting onimitsu who had thus far ignored all of her attempts at polite interruption.

Without further ado, she pulled a dead herring from Hammerspace and smacked Sasuke across the face with it. "Knock it off right now, or in the name of Betty Page-sama, I'll knock it off for you!" she stated simply, "Just because onee-sama turned you into a girl doesn't give you to right to act like the world is coming to an end."

Actually, as Kanashimi herself explained before, those two events were in fact synonymous, but Kanashimi was speaking from a metaphorical standpoint.

"Aaaaaaargh!" Sasuke, because he... or rather, she... did not give two bits about metaphors, synonyms, or allegories for that matter, drew his/her katana and was about to engage in some very unladylike venting when Kanashimi hit him/her with the herring hard enough lay the incensed onimitsu flat out on his/her ass.

"Like I said, kid," Kanashimi said, looming over the stunned Sasuke (which was a feat in and of itself, as Kanashimi was still in chibi-battle-mode), "Give me one good reason to shut you up for good and I'll do it. We can't afford to have you freak out because of some minor detail like a sex change."

"But I'm a woman now!" Sasuke howled, the indignity and absurdity of it all finally overwhelming his/her already frazzled nerves, "I'm... I'm... I'm a Sanada _kunoichi_!"

"Woman? Kunoichi?" Kanashimi echoed disdainfully. She reached out and gave one of Sasuke's new "assets" a good squeeze. "Sorry to disappoint you, but even if these things were enough to send Yukimura over there into a state of shock, you're barely an A. I think the threshold for kunoichi is at least a decent C."

"_AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-UUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!_"

-------------------------------------

_"Thaaaat probably wasn't a good thing, just then,_" Benitora announced somewhat unnecessarily as the echoes of the shrill screams died away, _"If it hadn't been so girly, I would have said something happened to Sasuke._"

Migeira halted and narrowed his eyes. "I was afraid of this..."

"Oh no, we're too late!" Yuya panted, almost running into Migeira. For some reason, the way back to the others was taking nearly ten times as long as their initial foray, even going at a full-out sprint. Yuya had been hard-pressed to keep up with Benitora's dogged (sorry, couldn't resist!) agile endurance and Migeira's incredibly long strides. She sat down on a nearby tree root to catch her breath.

_"But what's really weird..."_ Benitora continued, whimpering softly in agitation, "_I could swear that sounded like whoever it was, they were a good li away, if not more. Dammit, this forest is starting to get as tricky as Aokigahara!"_

"Benitora-san, I trust that your new senses do not play you false, but I believe we have been somehow led astray," Migeira announced.

Yuya and Benitora blinked and gaped at him. "What makes you say that?" Yuya asked.

_"Yeah, if you're hiding anything from us, you'd better spill it, and fast!"_ Benitora added.

"Call it a hunch," was Migeira's only explanation, "It will do us no good to continue exhausting ourselves by running around this trap. We'll make our stand here." He carefully placed Hotaru on the ground beside Yuya and surveyed their surroundings.

Despite the relatively old age of the forest, there was plenty of bracken and stands of younger trees to constrict his field of vision to a bare ten meters. The shifting of light and shadow as the wind whispered through the branches did not help matters; it was all too easy to be distracted by an imagined glimpse of an enemy, only to be ambushed from an unanticipated direction. Migeira grit his teeth in exasperation. _'As if I was not already hampered because of what that demon spawn did to me...'_

Benitora was sniffing the dirt, attempting to reclaim the scent trail he had led the others along. _'I don't get it, it _smells _right, somehow... but it _feels _wrong!'_ He had not wanted to give credence to Migeira's suspicions (since they directly called his tracking abilities into question), but now that he had time to mull it over... _'Dammit, have I been leading us in circles this entire time?'_ That would be unforgivable; if he had played into Narrator's hands and placed Yuya in direct danger because he had not paid close enough attention, he would never forgive himself.

And then, the faintest _something_ tugged at his awareness...

_"Oi, heads up, guys, I think someone's headed this way!"_ Benitora snarled in low undertone. He sidled over to Migeira and poked him with his forepaw. _"Hey, you, get that cannon thingy of yours out, we've got incoming."_

"Which direction?" Migeira asked Benitora under his breath. Yuya was watching the two of them with a tense expression on her face, her revolver out and at the ready, her other hand clutching Hotaru's arm to keep him still. She had also stuffed Akira into her obi again, something that Benitora was _not_ happy to notice.

_"Just be ready for anything,"_ Benitora warned, striding over to Yuya and plopping himself on his haunches at her feet.

Migeira looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

_"Go stuff yourself, this is where _I'll _make my stand!"_ Benitora said.

Rolling his eyes and sighing, Migeira could do little more than maintain his constant visual sweeps of the forest as they waited in uncomfortable silence for the appearance of their enemy.

Fortunately, it was not an overlong interval. _"There!"_ Benitora shot to all four paws (yanking his ear out of Hotaru's hand in the process) and stared fixedly in the direction where he had barely caught the sound of a carefully placed footfall. Migeira took his cue from Benitora and fell into the defensive stance of someone used to unarmed combat techniques.

_'That's odd, why doesn't he just take out his Muramasa cannon and blow everything to hell?'_ Yuya wondered as she got to her feet and thrust Hotaru behind her. She brought up her revolver and sighted along the barrel...

There was an unmistakable sound of a twig snapping as the undergrowth rustled and was slowly pushed aside...

"Aroo?" _"Kyo-han, what the heck are you doing here?"_

"Onime no Kyo...?"

"Kyo!" Yuya immediately put her revolver down and breathed a sigh of relief.

"What the hell are you all doing just standing around here?" Kyo demanded sharply, though there was a fractional relaxation of his tense shoulders when he caught sight of Yuya.

That might have been pure coincidence, mind you.

"Well, we thought Kanashimi-san's onee-sama was about to attack," Yuya answered as she and Benitora walked toward him, "Thank goodness it was only you!"

_"Boy, am I glad you found us, Kyo-han!"_ Benitora added, _"Migeira-han seems to think we've walked into a trap of some sort."_

"I see you at least managed to find Hotaru and Akira," Kyo remarked. If he gave thought to the fact that Akira was lodged in Yuya's obi again, he did not mention it. "And picked up a self-righteous bastard in the bargain," he continued, noticing Migeira, "What the hell are you doing here, Migeira? Come to challenge me and set right the course of history or whatever crap you've been spouting?"

"Not this time, Onime no Kyo," Migeira replied stiffly, "However, that is only because I have been made aware of a graver and more immediate threat."

"Oh?" Kyo cocked a sardonic eyebrow. He would have said more, but Yuya interrupted him with a shout of, "No, no! Hotaru-chan, what did nee-san tell you about wandering off?"

For some reason, Hotaru ignored her and continued to toddle off in the direction of his newest fancy.

"Hotaru-chan! Young man, you come back here this instant!" Yuya scolded, chasing after the little boy.

"Who or whatever changed Hotaru of the Mibu into that child is something a thousand times more dangerous than whatever threat your existence poses," Migeira continued, as though there had not been an interruption.

"Let me guess - you have no idea how to deal with it on your own?" Kyo drawled smugly.

Migeira glared at him, but nodded, once.

"What the hell makes you think I'm going to waste any of my valuable time helping you?" continued Kyo, really warming up to tweaking the hell out of Migeira. It probably had less to do with the fact that he had any particular dislike for Migeira, and more to do with the fact that he had tasted humiliation for the second time in as many days at the hands of someone less than one-fifth his size. A female, skillet-wielding someone at that. _Someone_ had to suffer for his wounded ego, and Migeira had just set himself up as a wonderfully opportune target. "You'd better just get the hell out of my face, Migeira, before I rearrange yours."

Migeira's spine became more rigid, and his right arm twitched noticeably beneath the concealing folds of his mantle. However, his only reply was a strained, "You have an obligation, Onime no Kyo, to return your comrade to normal." He inclined his head toward Benitora, who was less than thrilled to be brought into the conversation in such an ignominious manner.

_"Hey, I am _not _Kyo-han's__ 'obligation,' jackass, so don't you think you can use me to make him listen to you!"_ Benitora snarled, his hackles raised like he had just strolled over a static-charged carpet.

Kyo's smirk became slightly less amused and slightly more angry without losing a wit of its blood-thirsty overtones. "You've got to be pretty damned sure of yourself and incredibly stupid in the bargain to think you can talk to me like that and not eat steel," he remarked flatly.

"If your ego is that important to you, then I see I have wasted valuable time," said Migeira, abruptly and unexpectedly turning his back on Kyo, "And even if you don't care enough about your friends, at least I will do what I can to protect the most deserving of them."

Kyo's jaw actually dropped (but only slightly) while Benitora literally fell over in surprise as Migeira strode away, as though giving a katana-happy samurai and an incensed canine the cold shoulder was something he did every day.

"Oi, what the hell…!" Kyo managed once his brain managed to override his shock. _'Am I losing my grip?'_ he thought privately, _'Have I become so soft that any idiot takes it for granted that he can insult me to my face and walk away with his head still on his shoulders?'_ His eyes narrowed dangerously. _'Well, that stops here and now!'_ After he killed Migeira, perhaps Benitora could be persuaded to keep his trap shut with a simple threat. It would be a shame to have to kill one of his servants, especially since the other seemed to have wandered away and gotten herself lost again…

_'Wait a minute…'_ Kyo checked himself mid-stride, his katana already half-way out of its saya.

"Precisely, Onime no Kyo," Migeira said, not bothering to stop or turn around, "Yuya-san went after Hotaru-san and has not returned. Given the present state of affairs, I can only conclude that she is in danger. And since you and Hidetada-san are more concerned with your injured pride, I will go and…"

Migeira neatly side-stepped to avoid being run over by Kyo and Benitora as man and dog dove into the underbrush where they had last seen Yuya. Migeira sighed and cast his eyes heavenward, as if asking if it was possible for such consummate warriors to be so dense at the same time. Straightening his mantle, Migeira followed after them in a more dignified manner.

* * *

"Now…" Kanashimi began, once more in her normal mode ("normal" being something of a misnomer, as anyone who has met Kanashimi knows that she defies any accepted and several rejected conceptions of the appellation in every way, shape, or form, unless there exists a "normal" categorization for whip-and-duct-tape-wielding, bishonen-hunting, omnipotent and sardonically witty muses with a penchant for fishnet stockings and plaid), "Have we calmed down?" 

"…mrfibblempdf…"

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Kanashimi said sweetly, a manic glint in her eye, "Do I need to bring out the fish again?"

Sasuke immediately straightened, a flat-out terrified look on her face. "No, you don't!"

"No I don't…. what, Sasuke-chan?" Kanashimi prompted.

"No, you don't… Kanashimi-sama," Sasuke managed, only with great effort. The distasteful utterance seemed to bring her back to her senses and the gender-bent onimitsu glared at Kanashimi with her customary sullen aversion.

"Excellent!" Kanashimi chirped, banishing the much-abused dead herring back into Hammerspace, "Help me to get Yukimura coherent, or at least on his feet again, so we can find the others, m'kay?"

As much as Sasuke hated to admit it, Kanashimi had hit on the only (logical) plan of action. "All right, fine," she allowed, "How do we do that?"

Kanashimi glanced over at Yukimura and pursed her lips. "That's a good question..." She sighed mulling over her options. "Well, it's always best to go with tried and true." But just as she was summoning another herring, an Evil Thought occurred to her. This was not an unusual event, but the Evil Thought also happened to be Quite Devious and, most importantly, Entertaining.

"What's the hold-up?" groused Sasuke, noticing Kanashimi's deceptively vacant expression. She immediately regretted opening her mouth when Kanashimi blinked back into focus and regarded the suddenly wary onimitsu with shining eyes and a Cheshire-cat grin.

"I've figured out how to wake Yukimura up."

"... And that would be how?" Sasuke finally encouraged, when it became clear Kanashimi would not elaborate further until she asked for it.

Kanashimi's grin became impossibly wider as she delivered the import of her Quite Devious and Entertaining Evil Thought: "All you have to do is give him a little kiss..."

The corner of Sasuke's left eye spasmed. "You're shitting me, right?" A heated blush crept across Sasuke's cheeks even before she could think about it.

Kanashimi rolled her eyes and heaved a deep, long-suffering sigh, laughing mentally all the while. "Look, we can engage in another series of histrionics if that will make you feel better, but the end result will be the same. Kiss him and get on with it so we can move out, or I'll smack you with something more substantial this time!"

"But…"

"If you're going to go all squidgy on me, I just might have to kiss him for you," Kanashimi said, moving toward Yukimura.

She managed to avoid the katana blade by the merest micrometer. "Make up your mind, will you?" she demanded, rounding on Sasuke and ignoring the razor-sharp bit of metal hovering right around her trachea.

Sasuke's nervous twitch returned with a vengeance, but as she looked at her liege lord, she could not but accept that the planets and stars were aligned against her. "I'll... do it," Sasuke mumbled under her breath, lowering her katana ever-so-slowly. Taking a deep breath and gathering all her courage, Sasuke moved past Kanashimi toward Yukimura... hesitated... slowly bent down to reach Yukimura's lips...

... at which point, Kanashimi, bored with the long, drawn-out scene, pushed Sasuke forward as hard as she could.

The resultant kiss would have sent shonen-ai fans into throes of fangirlish glee if Sasuke's current gender was conveniently forgotten.

Kanashimi snapped a quick picture for posterity (and later blackmailing purposes).

"Oh, hello, Sasuke," Yukimura said, apparently not at all surprised to see a female Sasuke sprawled and blushing in his lap, "What say we all go and find Kyo-san and the others?"

Kanashimi smirked and patted the stunned Sasuke on her head. "Okay, Sasuke-chan, enough PDA, we have a job to do. When we stop for the night, you're more than welcome to continue."

"Yare, yare, I hold Kyo-san doesn't get into too much trouble without us," Yukimura remarked as he watched his red-faced subordinate chase a laughter-hysterical muse about the clearing with her over-long katana.

* * *

"There you are, Hotaru-chan!" Yuya exclaimed victoriously, snatching up the blonde child, who squawked in surprise, "What were you thinking, suddenly running off like that!" 

"But she was going to give me candy!" Hotaru protested, waving a small brightly-colored cardboard box that rattled, as though it were some talisman to ward off all trouble.

"I don't care, I've told you so many times before not to..." Yuya stopped mid-sentence, cold dread washing over her. "Hotaru-chan," she began, swallowing against her suddenly dry throat and trying to ignore the frisson scittering up and down her spine, "who is _she_?"

"Her," Hotaru replied impatiently, clearly of the opinion that Yuya should have been aware of something so _completely_ obvious. He pointed to a small person seated tree stump not three paces away. A small person with pink pigtails and malevolent neon pink eyes, who was grinning at Yuya as a cat grins at a lame, plump mouse.

Yuya's fear was practically choking her, but she would be damned if she wouldn't go down without a fight. Pulling Hotaru behind her, she then began reaching for her concealed revolver. "You're... you're Kanashimi's onee-sama, aren't you?" she asked, trying to distract her enemy for a few precious seconds. Not that Narrator had made any threatening moves, but Yuya knew that meant squat when it came to insane omnipotent beings.

Narrator cocked her head quizzically, her gaze locked on Yuya's. "Application of regression analysis concludes relationship between x-one and x-two variables significant," she answered.

Yuya didn't know if that was a "yes" or a "no," but then, she really did not give a damn. Shoving Hotaru to one side, she whipped out her revolver and fired two shots almost point-blank at Narrator. The rounds plowed harmlessly into the ground several meters away as Narrator vanished from sight.

_'Oh no!'_ Yuya whirled around, trying to figure out where the authoress would attack from.

A shrill battle cry sounded behind her, but before she could turn around, Yuya was thrown to the ground by an explosive shockwave accompanied by near-unbearable heat.

"Wha…?" Yuya cried, looking over her shoulder, expecting to see Doom descending on her in the form of a black iron skillet. She blinked. Instead of the Skillet'o Doom, the explosion had come from Hotaru, who had used his fire-wielding power (channeled through a hefty stick) to protect his adopted nee-san. Scorched earth and charred trees gave evidence to the ferocity of his counter-attack. "Hotaru…chan?"

The chibi-swordsman ignored her, crouching in a defensive guard as he glared up at his opponent through narrowed, predatory eyes. Ken-ki limned his tiny form in white-hot tongues of flame.

"Unanticipated variable significantly affects initial hypothesis," Narrator hissed unpleasantly, hanging from a tree branch above the fire-line.

Hotaru's only response was launch himself up at her like a firecracker touched by a match.

"No, Hotaru-chan, don't…!" Yuya cried helplessly, certain that Hotaru had just leapt into the embrace of Certain Death.

"_Yaaaaaaaaahhhh_" Hotaru yelled, all focus on defeating Narrator in a single blow.

It was a noble effort, backed by not unimpressive ability, but Narrator had her skillet.

**_Ker_****_-wham!_**

_CRACK!_

Yuya threw herself forward, catching Hotaru before he could slam into the ground, his improvised weapon in useless splinters falling from his bruised hand.

"Itaiiii, nee-san…" he whimpered, his bottom lip quivering.

"Sh-shhh, Hotaru-chan, it's all right," Yuya comforted him, "You did very well." Ever so gently, she placed him on the ground and brought her revolver to bear on Narrator. "Unforgivable," she declared, her voice quivering with barely contained rage, "You already made him a child! You didn't have to hurt him like that!"

"Insignificant correlation," Narrator retorted with a mad cackle, dropping to the ground. She pointed her skillet at Yuya.

The bounty huntress refused to be intimidated. "Why don't you come get me," she spat, beckoning to Narrator. Her finger tightened incrementally on the trigger.

Pink eyes narrowed to evil slits…

_"Mizuchi!"_

"Kyo!" Yuya gasped as the attack blasted from the trees somewhere to her right, zeroed in on Narrator.

Kyo, with Benitora and Migeira hot on his heels, burst into the open a split second later.

"No good!" Migeira was shouting even as the echoes of the Mizuchi faded like the memory of thunder (leaving the blasted ruin of a good many trees in its wake), "She vanished before the attack hit her!"

Kyo cursed violently and rounded on Yuya. "What the _hell_ were you thinking, running off like that?" he bellowed, his left hand twitching as he if wanted to do nothing more than grab Yuya and shake her, "Are you _that_ careless with your life, dogface?"

Yuya's relief at the rescue was quickly swallowed up by righteous anger. "I can take care of myself!" she yelled, "And Hotaru-chan was…!"

"Idiot girl!" Kyo interrupted hotly, "Your damned stubbornness is going to get you killed one of these days if you don't open your eyes and…!"

"Open my eyes? How can you say that, after you…!"

_"Uh, Kyo-han?__ Yuya-han? Guys, oi, I don't think…!"_ Benitora tried to interrupt, but his incoherent growls and barks only contributed to the general din.

"The enemy is still alive, Onime no Kyo, we don't have time to…" Migeira interjected sternly.

_"YOU SHUT UP!"_ Kyo and Yuya yelled at him in unison.

The corner of Migeira's eye spasmed.

"We're going back to join Yukimura," Kyo said coldly, cutting Yuya short and grabbing her by her wrist, "Enough of your screwing around, keep a tight hold on Hotaru so we can get the hell out of here."

"And what makes you think you have the right to lead me around?" Yuya retorted, "Let go of me, you jerk!" She pulled as hard as she could against his grip, knowing it was a symbolic struggle at best but refusing just to give in to Kyo.

It was only natural (in Kyo's opinion) that he give her exactly what she wanted, and if she fell on her ass in the process, it was only fair comeuppance. _'After I ran all the way out here to save her ungrateful ass…'_ he thought as he suddenly let go, at the instant Yuya was most off-balance.

Yuya half-shrieked as she fell backwards, and Kyo allowed himself a small smug smirk of victory… until he noticed Narrator hovering in the air right behind Yuya.

Narrator bared her teeth at him in a mocking parody of his smirk. "Outlying unit… vulnerable," she reminded him as her skillet descended.

"No!" he shouted, diving forward to pull Yuya to safety, to strike Narrator down…

… too late.

**_WHAM!_**

"_YUYAAAAAAAA!_"

"Hi-hi, peoples!" Kanashimi chirped, popping into view just then with Yukimura, Sasuke, Okuni and Saizo-the-Fern in tow, "We followed the sounds of melodramatic shouts and explosions. Did we miss anything?"

Eyes blazing with killing fury, Kyo turned to her, Yuya's unmoving form in his arms. Tenro glowed in his hand, limned in the dark aura of unfettered bloodlust.

"Oh…"

-----------------------------

Somewhere in the dark, shadowed halls of the castle home of the Mibu, a young man with silver-white hair paused momentarily as an eerie presence filtered across his awareness and was gone like a willow-the-wisp. _'I must be imagining things…'_ Shinrei tried to convince himself, though he still felt the cold chill of lingering evil. Shaking his head, he continued on, deaf to the low, keening chortle that shuddered through the darkness at his passing…

---------------------

**To My (Beloved!)**** Reviewers:** Ahem, some of you might still be thinking that it would be a good thing to cause me grievous bodily injury for failing to update for so long. But please, let me remind you that if you do, there will be even more lapses between installments!

**

* * *

Kanashimi:** Now _that_ would be a cryin' shame, wouldn't it? 

**Narrator:** Kanashimi, you're not helping!

**Kanashimi** Since when is "helping" in my job description?

**Narrator: **(muttering) I knew I should have taken a closer look at that contract… that's what I get for signing my little sister on as a muse!

**Kanashimi: **True, that. Anyway, thank your reviewers for being so patient, they at least deserve that!

**Narrator: **Keep your skirt on, I'm getting there!

**

* * *

animegrl1047:** Run, animegrl-san, run! Thank you so much for being patient, and as a token of such, here is a Plot Hole you can use to send your imouto into a parallel universe for a bit. 

**(Kanashimi:** You know, if you ever tried that on me…

**Narrator: **Yes, yes, I know: pain, death and squirrels. (shudders) And it looks as though you have another candidate for a minion…

**Kanashimi** I'll think about it. Depends on if she can abide by the dress code or not.

**Narrator: **Not everyone can get away with plaid and fishnets, you know.

**Kanashimi**Well, that's why I'm so extraordinary!

**Narrator: **Yes, with an extraordinarily capacious ego!

I hope you did well on your exams!

**yami1:** I don't know if it's "baby-sitting" more than it's "adopting." Hope you enjoyed this newest chapter!

**Alyson Metallium:** (grabs Akira and throws him into a Plot Hole before he can ice her) Hahahah! Victory is mine! at least you aren't threatening me with death for not updating for so long… and yes, it is rather hard to be pro Kyo/Yuya and Akira/Yuya at the same time. I blame it all on nekozuki-san! As for Kyo being jealous – we _all_ know he is, he just can't seem to admit it to himself. (shakes head, smacks Kyo a good one, and runs from a Mizuchi) Yee!

**Damien-chan:** Argh, the voice of my conscience, leaving so many other fics unfinished! I'm such a bad fanfiction writer, I'm _soorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyy_ (starts sobbing)

**(Kanashimi: **(sighs and pulls a herring out of Hammerspace) Lets have none of those Sohma Ritsu melodramatics, oaky? (whacks her sister on the head)

**Narrator:** Itai! Dangit, that's not funny!

And once again, thanks so much for the for the adorable fanart on MT. I wish that had been up for the contest, because I surely would have voted for it!

**Windy-Skies:** (heart eyes) I love you too! (glomps WS) As for being a muse… do you find it entertaining to smack people around when they're being lazy?

**(Kanashimi:** Do you have squirrel minions you can sic on your onee-sama for trying to down-size you behind your back?

**Narrator: **Ummm, never mind…

**Jouhaiichi** I don't manage my time. That's my secret.

**Nekozuki1776: **How many times am I going to have to grab Akira-usagi back from other fangirls? He's _mine_ gosh-darnit! (grabs Akira and padlocks the Plot Hole) And one of the great things about my throw-away comedic fics is that I'm free to use any language I want – I guess that's why this story's going along so much faster than _Intermezzo…_

**LadyWater2010:** Oh my.

**(Kanashimi: **(blink, blink) I think we've finally found someone more deserving of a strait-jacket and a padded room with a view than you, onee-sama.

**Chibi**** Tenshi:** No, I would _never _hurt such a wonderful fan! And I suppose whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm really going to have to draw a fanart of chibi-Hotaru now…

**Yami**** Chikara: **Ano… well, I'm glad I've made another convert, but you _really_ don't want a copy of my "Ethics." It's…

**(Kanashimi:** Long, heavy, boring, antiquated, and boring.

**Narrator: **Just because _some _of us don't think it's right to abuse omnipotence…!

**Squiggles: **"Based on," nothin', Kanashimi's her own person and unfortunately, my little sister.

**(Kanashimi: **(thwacks Narrator in the back of the head so she faceplants on the key board)

**Narrator: **9804u3qoik90!

**Ahnkitomi**and **Shinomori**** Kyo: **Hope ya'll liked this chapter, and the accompanying transformations!

Thank you one and all for your reviews, and please remember, I can't write more of _Intermezzo_ unless I'm alive to do it!

Salute!


	5. A Sample Frame of Mind

Narrator here - no, I'm not dead. I've just been really, really, **_REALLY_** distracted lately, applying to grad schools in Japan and Texas and working full-time. (bows humbly) Please read and enjoy, and be amused, so that you don't feel the urge to kill me?

**Disclaimer**: Though the Laws of Physics are pretty much chucked out the window in this story, the Laws of Copyright are not. The Narrator still does not own _Samurai Deeper Kyo!_

* * *

**Chapter 5: A (Sample) Frame of Mind**

**_BOOM!_**

"Aaaaaaiiii-_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee…!"_

"Ooooo…"

**_CRASH! WHAM!..._** _thud!_

"Argh!"

"Aah…"

_**BOOM! WHACK!**thudthudthudthud!_**CRACK!_SPLAT!_**

"Ooo…!"

"Dang, I don't care if you're Mibu-ichizoku or not, that _had_ to friggin' hurt!" Kanashimi observed with pseudo-sympathy as a Mibu minion was sent head-first through a very thick tree trunk.

"Oh my, he's bleeding!" Okuni gasped and promptly fainted. Again.

"Okuni-san!" Migeira exclaimed, catching her before she hit the ground. Again.

Kanashimi rolled her eyes. "Hey, Yukimura," she said, turning to the master strategist, "are you sure you don't want to be in on this?" She pointed to Kyo, Sasuke, Hotaru, and Benitora, who were in the midst of making mincemeat of the hundred or so assassins that had suddenly beset their little party. Kyo hadn't even given their leader a chance to finish his long-winded monologue about "death to the accursed demon child of the Mibu, etc., etc." before launching himself at them like a rabid raccoon on an overloaded garbage bin.

Sasuke and Benitora had followed suit with equal enthusiasm. Hotaru joined in, after asking permission from Kanashimi, of course.

Yukimura shook his head. "It wouldn't be very fair, would it?" he asked, "I'd be depriving them of several opportunities to vent their anger and frustration in a constructive manner."

"Constructive?" Kanashimi echoed. The forest around them somewhat resembled the aftermath of a concentrated carpet-bombing, and there were still minions who had not had the bright idea of fleeing for their lives. But she could see Yukimura's point. "Meh, but you have to admit, they really chose a sucky opportunity to attack Kyo, what with…" She indicated the still-unconscious Yuya, whose head was resting in her lap.

"I suppose even self-styled gods can lack a sense of timing," Yukimura replied as the last minion was dispatched in a manner both messy and painful. "What about Yuya-san?"

Kanashimi shook her head. "No change… we'll only be able to figure out what happened to her when she finally wakes up."

A dark shadow suddenly loomed over them, radiating an overwhelming aura of unsated homicidal rage.

"Oh, hi, Kyo," Kanashimi greeted casually, "Are you feeling better now?"

Kyo made a sound that was probably a very foul curse word and flung himself on the ground, his back against a tree trunk, glaring at all them as if waiting for an excuse to lop off another head.

"And here I thought only females got PMS-y," the muse commented, "Looks like Sasuke-chan's got some competition after all."

Yukimura deftly deflected a very serious attempt on Sasuke's part to send Kanashimi to meet her maker, and took the onimitsu-turned-kunoichi to one side to discuss proper anger management.

_"Why hasn't Yuya-han woken up yet?"_ Benitora wanted to know as he anxiously nudged the bounty huntress' shoulder with a paw, _"You said she'd wake up after your sister attacked her!"_

"What happened to Yuya-nee-san?" Hotaru added plaintively, kneeling down beside Yuya. Gone was the battle rage that hinted his true nature had not been entirely subsumed - Hotaru appeared to be about five seconds away from another bout of toddler tears.

Kyo's eye twitched, and his baleful glare became one of disgust.

"Like I said… " Kanashimi said tiredly, "We won't know anything until she wakes up; and she will, trust me."

"And why, exactly, should we do that?" Migeira asked sharply, narrowing his eyes at her, "The Mibu attacked before I could say anything, but I cannot help but notice that your ki is very much like the demonic entity that has wrought these unnatural transformations."

"You're not exactly the brightest bulb or tastiest crayon in the box, are you," Kanashimi retorted impatiently. Migeira blinked. "If you'd been paying attention, you'd notice that I've been trying to keep the damage of my dear onee-sama's insane rampage in check, except that _some_ people…" here she sent a significant Look at Kyo, who ignored her, "decided that they could handle her themselves."

"'Onee-sama'?" Migeira echoed, clearly caught off-guard, "You mean, you are related to the little girl who…?" He stopped short, having said something he wished he had not.

_"Oi, how'd you know that that whack-job's a little girl?"_ Benitora wanted to know.

"Have you had a run-in with Narrator-san?" Yukimura added, having finished his little counseling session with Sasuke.

Even Kyo had quit sulking long enough to hear Migeira's explanation - the self-proclaimed justice-seeker looked supremely uncomfortable under everyone's combined stares. "I have had to misfortune to meet her," he finally admitted.

"What did onee-sama do to you?" Kanashimi pressed.

"It is not important to the current situation," Migeira replied sharply.

"I think we should be the ones to determine that, Migeira-san," Yukimura said, "I repeat Kanashimi-san's question: what did Narrator-san do to you?"

_"Yeah, spill it, already!"_ Benitora demanded, _"It can't be as bad as me, at least you're still human! Relatively speaking."_

Migeira's eye twitched, though he surely could not decipher Benitora's smart-ass remark. Without a word, he got to his feet and strode several paces from the group, turned sharply on one foot, flung back his mantle, leveled his cannon arm directly at Benitora…

_"Oi, watch where you point that thing!"_ Benitora howled in alarm.

"Don't shoot him!" exclaimed Kanashimi and Yukimura in unison, so taken aback that they had not reached for their respective weapons.

"Shoot! Shoot!" Sasuke and Hotaru cheered.

_**FOOM**!_

bif!

"'Bif'?" Kanashimi echoed, blinking in confusion. Everyone else was too stunned to speak (or still unconscious).

_"Am I dead?"_ Benitora asked, cautiously opening one eye. He looked around and quickly surmised he had not left the mortal plane. _"Whew! Hey, wait a minute…" _He turned and glared at Migeira, baring his teeth. _"What the hell did you go and do that for, you bastard! What did you shoot me with?"_

Kanashimi leaned down and picked up a small yellow ball that lay on the ground at Benitora's feet. "This is…" she said in amazement, "… a wiffle ball?" She squeezed the Styrofoam sponge ball just to make sure her eyes were not playing tricks on her.

"Yes - you sister turned my Muramasa cannon into a toy!" Migeira raged, "Now it only shoots those ball things instead of my soul!"

Absolute silence reigned…

… for all of two seconds.

**_"WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"_**

"It's not _funny!"_ bellowed Migeira as everyone (Kyo included) began laughing their heads off. His face turned bright red from combined anger and embarrassment. "Do you idiots have any idea what this means!"

"It means Justice goes armed with Nerf cannon!" Kanashimi managed between giggles, before collapsing into another hysterical fit of mirth.

Migeira was rendered nearly incoherent with fury. "It means that the temporal instability I have been warning you about has been accelerated!" he finally spat, "With one of the Muramasa so fundamentally altered, one of the guards against history being irrevocably changed has been nullified!"

That sobered everyone up pretty darn quickly (except Hotaru, who probably would not have understood what Migeira said under normal circumstances anyway).

"Shit, he's right!" Kanashimi swore, "I forgot that you guys weren't the only integral elements of this reality! Those damn Muramasa are also important!"

"This is getting out of hand," Yukimura observed grimly, while Kanashimi let loose a string of Gaelic invectives so vitriolic that set fire to a nearby tree, "We're not making any progress either in…"

"Nee-san's waking up," Hotaru informed everyone off-handedly.

"Eh?" Kanashimi stopped cursing long enough to look down at the young bounty huntress. Yuya moaned softly, her expression pained. "Hey, you're right… _will you guys back off and give her some friggin' air already?_" Benitora sat back on his haunches so quickly he almost fell over (Hotaru actually did fall over), Migeira backpedaled right into Kyo, while Sasuke and Yukimura sighed into their hands.

"Speak to me, girl," Kanashimi urged, after giving everyone a suitably admonishing death-glare, "Say something…"

Yuya's lips moved slightly, framing silent words as she struggled to broach the veil of unconsciousness. Instinctively, Kanashimi leaned closer, straining to hear.

"… Appurikotto Paffu… Transformation…"

_'Huh…?'_

**_KA-shin!_**

"Aurgh…!"

Blinding, orange-gold light and sweet-scented silver smoke filled the air…

_

* * *

_

_'Wha… what's going on?'_ Yuya drifted in an impossibly bright dream haze, where annoyingly cutesy music played and someone with a very high-pitched girly voice was singing about fluffy bunnies and sugar tart. _'I wish this would stop, right now…'_ Yuya thought in irritation.

As if in response, the music and singing stopped dead, but the haze still lingered. Yuya had time to notice something else, too. _'Am I… naked?'_

**_"YOU ARE A NEW CHAMPION!"_**

_'Ki-yah!'_ The basso profundo voice came out of nowhere, reverberating in her head like an enormous gong.

**_"OH, SORRY, I DIDN'T MEAN TO STARTLE YOU."_**

_'It's not that! Well, yes, it is… But even worse, why do you have to be so loud?'_ Yuya demanded.

**_"SORRY! I MEAN…sorry. I just wanted to tell you that you are a new champion, who will use her powers to fight for love and justice and fluffy cute things!"_**

_'… what?'_ Yuya was now thoroughly confused, and more than a little ticked-off. Plus, she was fairly certain that yes, she was indeed naked. _'What's going on? Who are you?'_

**_"Sorry, but I'm only supposed to tell you that you're a new champion and that you're supposed to use your powers to…"_**

_'"fight for love and justice and cute fluffy things," I got that part the first time, now tell me…!'_

**_"Ganbatte kudasai, Bishoujo Bounty Huntress Apricot!"_**

_'Now wait just one second…!'_ Just then, the dream haze evaporated completely and Yuya was rather unceremoniously dumped into full wakefulness.

Where everyone was staring at her with slack jaws and stunned expressions.

And where she suddenly felt suspiciously under-dressed.

"What are all of you gaping at?" she flared, noticing that even Yukimura seemed rather pole-axed, which could _not_ be a good thing, "What do you think you're…?"

A mischievous breeze coursed through the clearing, driving away remnants of smoke and delicate sakura petals… and flipping the hem of Yuya's suddenly all-too short skirt above her bared mid-riff.

**_"KI-yaaaaaaahhhhh!"_** Yuya shrieked, clamping down on her skirt, only to discover it wasn't the familiar magenta cotton cloth of her kimono, but a silky peach satin that seemed to catch every single errant puff of air. As a matter of fact, none of her kimono remained - in its place was a brief sleeveless bodice and ridiculously pouffy upper armbands of the same material as the skirt. Instead of geta, she wore knee-high yellow boots with sharply pointed heels that caused her to teeter alarmingly. Her obi had been replaced by a creamy white sash tied in an enormous bow around her hips, its ends fluttering just above the ground like doves too nervous to land. White gloves sheathed her hands and forearms, and a golden band encircled her right upper thigh.

"Erk…" she managed.

_"Yuya-han was naked, and I can still see her underwear…_" Benitora's tongue lolled out of his mouth and blood trickled from his snout. _"I can die a happy man… dog… whatever…"_ Belatedly, he realized that Kyo was standing right next to him, his right hand clenched on Tenro's hilt, one blazing crimson eye fixed menacingly on his number two servant. Benitora shut his trap with a snap (nearly taking off half his tongue in the process) and sidled away from the homicidal samurai. _"Yuya-han's undies…"_ he murmured, once he was a safe distance away.

"What… what sort of devilment is this?" Migeira demanded hoarsely. With great effort, he tore his eyes away from Yuya and stared at Kanashimi. "What has happened to Yuya-san?"

"It seems onee-sama's… feeling generous today," Kanashimi said with a ghost of her normal sarcasm.

"Leaving Yuya-san half-naked is hardly generous," Yukimura felt compelled to point out. _'Generous for the rest of us, maybe… it _is _a rather cute outfit on her.'_ Just as that thought occurred to him, Yukimura felt the razor-sharp edge of a blade rest against his unprotected throat. Even more disturbing, however, was the fact that he had missed Kyo's smoldering ken-ki, resonating with the demon-eyed samurai's desire to spill Yukimura's blood at any cost. "Ne, Kyo-san, you…"

_"Back off!"_ Sasuke's battle cry shattered the dazed atmosphere, Shibien's black blade crackling with tongues of lightning as she swiped down on Kyo. Tenro leaped instantly to block, and Kyo was driven back fives steps by the sheer physical force of Sasuke's strike.

"Sasuke!" Yukimura berated himself for being caught off-guard, for now, Sasuke and Kyo had touched off a fight that would most likely leave at least one of them dead.

"You've got a lot of guts, lifting your katana against Yukimura right in front of me, Demon-Eyes!" Sasuke growled.

Kyo's eyes narrowed, a smirk slitting his face. He really could not explain why he suddenly found himself with Tenro a hairsbreadth from Yukimura's trachea or why he had wanted to kill the master strategist so much at that very moment, but if this kid was spoiling for a fight, Onime no Kyo would not disappoint. "You gonna go at it for real this time, brat?" he drawled.

Sasuke's response was a smirk that mirrored Kyo's for bloodthirstiness. "You were lucky last time," she said.

"Oh, for cripe's sake!" Kanashimi groaned, holding her head in her hands, "I'd have thought turning Sasuke into a girl would have at least made him smarter…"

Yukimura was torn between stopping the two warriors and simply let them have at it; after all, he would be terribly upset if someone attempted to stop a fight between him and Kyo. _'It's what Sasuke-kun wants, more than anything… Kyo-san, too.'_

Migeira watched Yukimura out of the corner of his eye; after the initial shock, the Sanada general seemed to be observing the impending death-match with utter complacency. _'If Sanada does not intervene, then I have no reason to, either. Perhaps the child will solve the problem of Onime-no-Kyo's existence for me.'_ He nodded, his decision made. _'I will stop them only if Sasuke is in danger, for he must not die yet.'_

Hotaru stared at Kyo and Sasuke with wide-eyed anticipation, ki slowly beginning to manifest about him. "I want to fight, too…" he said softly.

_'… undies…'_ Benitora was in no condition to head off another round of testosterone-driven stupidity.

"Kyo? Sasuke-kun?" Yuya's freak-out session about her bizarre wardrobe change came to a screeching halt when she saw Kyo and a suspiciously feminine Sasuke unexplainably square off as though they fully intended on killing each other. "Wait! Why are you two…!"

Heedless of Yuya's protestations, Kyo and Sasuke lunged at each other…

_'STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP…!'_

That, at least, was what Yuya _meant_ to scream.

What came out was: _"APRICOT STUN NECTAR CANNON!"_

Golden sparks flew from the palm of her outstretched right hand like a swarm of fireflies, coalescing into the familiar form of her matchlock revolver… only about twenty times larger than normal. Before Yuya's scrambled brain could process this fact, her trigger finger had already squeezed off two shots.

**_BANG! BANG!_**

Sasuke had to literally hit the dirt to avoid the mass of sickly-sweet scented orange goo that hurtled toward her head, while Kyo merely checked his headlong charge with thoughtless ease as the stuff flew past.

"Whoa…" Yukimura said, which pretty much summed up the situation.

"Wha… What's going on here!" Yuya shrieked, dropping her weapon like it had burned her hand, "What the hell… Why…?"

Kanashimi headed off Yuya's panic fit with a dead herring smacked smartly across her face. "Don't," she told the transformed bounty huntress sternly, "Spazzing will only make this more difficult than it has to be." Yuya was too stunned to be hysterical. "It's not like you have anything to complain about," Kanashimi continued, banishing the herring, "Onee-sama turned you into a magical pretty girl, probably because she thought it would be funny and…"

"Stripping dog-face, isn't funny, it's sick!" Kyo spat.

Yuya's cheeks flamed bright red. "Then stop leering at me if you really believe that, jerk!" she yelled hotly, hugging her arms around her exposed midriff and slumping her shoulders.

"Ahem!" Kanashimi interrupted, heading off Kyo's retort, "I was going to add that onee-sama has used Yuya here to create a new vector in this universe. There's nothing more diametrically opposed to a guy-centered, fighting-obsessed storyline than the fluffy sweetness of a magical pretty girl."

"A magic… what?" Yuya demanded, trying to simultaneously adjust her skirt, bodice, and sash to cover up as much of her bared skin as possible and failing miserably.

"Magical pretty girl," Kanashimi repeated impatiently. She eyed Yuya critically. "No mistaking it - You look like a cross between _Tokyo Mew Mew _and _Sailor Moon_ with a bit of _Cardcaptor_ _Sakura_ thrown in for good measure. Trust me, it could always be worse."

"I don't want to imagine how _that_ would be accomplished," Yukimura remarked, deciding just to ignore Kanashimi's incomprehensible allusions, "Poor Yuya-san's embarrassed enough as it is."

"True that," Kanashimi agreed, walking around Yuya to scrutinize the costume (much to Yuya's discomfort), "Ya know, about the only thing she's missing to make her transformation complete is the cute mascot."

Blank stares greeted this latest non sequitur. "Never mind, it's not important."

Just then, Yuya noticed that yet another key aspect of her former accoutrement was MIA. "Ano… has anyone seen Akira-san?"

"You lost him again?" Kyo snorted scornfully.

But before Yuya could spit out an angry reply, a miniature lop-eared form pulled itself free of the pile of splintered wood and ash at her feet with a labored grunt. Lofting into the air on unsteady gossamer wings, it hovered in front of Kanashimi's less-than-surprised face.

"I," Akira-the-Ice-Emperor-turned-Fluffy-Stuffed-Bunny-turned-Cute-Fluffy-Winged-Bunny-Mascot stated flatly, "am going to _kill_ your sister."

* * *

"I can't possibly be the only one who fails to find the humor in this situation," Akira groused, folding his stubby arms as he sulked. 

"Ano, Kanashimi-san, are you going to be all right?" Yukimura asked the muse concernedly. Of course, he would have asked that of anyone who had laughed so long and hard they were currently in the fetal position on the ground, wheezing and gasping for want of air.

_"Man, this almost makes up for being turned into a dog!"_ Benitora (unhelpfully) contributed, _"Yuya-han's undies and brat-face is a flying chew-toy!"_ He rolled on the ground, barking and shaking with laughter.

"Benitora, stop it! You're being mean to Akira-san!" Yuya scolded. She had already sent Hotaru to time-out for trying to pull Akira's wings off (and for playing with her newly oversized weapon and discharging it so that Okuni was presently encapsulated in a rock-hard cocoon of orange crystal). "And stop trying to look up my skirt, dammit!"

"I can certainly sympathize with your current predicament," Migeira assured Akira, though admittedly, he was waging an uphill battle against the urge to burst out laughing with every irritated twitch of Akira's long ears.

"I doubt it," Akira retorted brusquely.

Kyo had dealt with the situation as he normally did: that is, he sat down in a comfortable spot and waited for the idiots to get the idiocy out of their systems so they could finally decide to get serious and go kill something.

Or, at least, he _tried_ to…

"Kyo!" Yuya called irritably, stomping over, "Why haven't you gotten Okuni-san out of that cocoon yet? We don't know if she can even breathe!"

"And that's something that should concern me because…?" Kyo asked boredly.

"Because she might suffocate!" Yuya raged, "You're always bragging how Tenro can cut through anything, why don't you prove it?" Even Sasuke's Shibien had failed to crack the hardened shell, though it should be noted that Sasuke had not really been trying _that_ hard.

"Still don't see why I should be concerned, dog-face," replied Kyo with smirk as Yuya's face became so red, he was certain steam was about to come whistling out of her ears.

"Oh, forget it, I'll do it myself!" Yuya huffed, whirling away in high dungeon, "And stop ogling my rear, pervert!"

"Do what you want," Kyo said, mostly to himself. Really, she was so amusing when she was pissed off. And he would keep staring at whatever part of her he wanted, thank you very much.

"Hooooo…!" Kanashimi finally sat up, having gotten control of her breathing at last. "Man, that was a trip. Right, let's see if we can't figure out how to go from here."

"I think getting Okuni-san out of that shell should be the first thing," Yukimura noted.

"Do we have to?" Kanashimi and Sasuke asked at the same time.

"Yes," Yukimura said firmly.

"Phooey," said Kanashimi, pouting, while Sasuke settled for a disgruntled sulk. "Hey, Yuya!" she called out to the bounty huntress, who was staring at the massive citrine lump in bewilderment, "You ought to be able to take care of that, since it was your weapon in the first place."

"How?" Yuya wanted to know, "I don't even understand how I got this way or how any of my powers work!"

"There's a dagger in your left boot," Akira supplied unexpectedly, "Touch it against the shell, and it will shatter."

"Oh… okay." Yuya bent down and pulled an elegant gold-chased stiletto from her boot. It looked rather flimsy, but since they had tried (practically) everything else, what was the harm?

As Yuya touched the tip of the blade against the smooth surface, a phrase suddenly popped into her head: _'Blossom Shell Dissemble!'_

**_Crack!_**

"Eep!" Yuya squeaked as shards of orange crystal exploded every which way, instantaneously dissipating into dust.

"It actually worked?" Sasuke blurted.

"Ano… Akira-san? How did you know that Yuya-san had that dagger?" Yukimura queried as everyone stared at the winged rabbit.

"I… I don't know," said Akira dazedly, "I just did."

"Well, duh, he's Yuya's mascot after all," Kanashimi pointed out as though amazed at their amazement, "Everyone knows that even if the magical pretty girl doesn't know how to use her powers, her mascot's always there to tell her."

"Why…?" Migeira began, then he stopped and shook his head, "Never mind, I get the feeling I do not want to know."

"I'm thinking it would be a good idea for Yuya and Akira to get together and see if they can't figure out how to tap into Yuya's new abilities," suggested Kanashimi.

_"What? Yuya-han going off alone with ice-bunny-man? I don't think so!"_ Benitora protested immediately.

"Like hell!" Kyo snapped at the same time, "No way she's…!"

"Awww, are both of ya'll jealous of little Akira-usagi, is that it?" Kanashimi teased.

_"Of course!"_ Benitora replied shamelessly, while Kyo settled for glaring and bitterly wishing he had not so stupidly opened his mouth. Where the hell had that jealous urge come from, anyway?

_'I'm not jealous!'_ Kyo protested inwardly.

_'Are too,'_ Kyoshiro pointed out. That was one of the bad things of having your worst enemy residing inside your head, he tended to know when you were lying.

_'Am not!'_ Kyo argued right back, pretending he could.

_'Are too.'_

_'Am not!'_

"Okay, while Kyo sorts things out with the voices in his head…" Kanashimi continued, but she was interrupted when Okuni groaned, indicating that she was regaining consciousness.

"Okuni-san!" Yuya called anxiously, helping the older woman to sit up, "Are you all right?"

"She was trapped in a cocoon of hardened sugar sap for the last ten minutes, of course she's just fine," Sasuke growled sarcastically.

"Sh!" Kanashimi told her.

"Where… where am I?" Okuni asked in a breathy voice, "What happened to me?"

"It's okay, you're safe now," Yuya told her rather helplessly, not knowing just how she was going to tell Okuni about being encased in solid syrup.

"Yuya-san…" Okuni smiled slightly. Until her eyes happened to drift downward a little and she noticed Yuya's new outfit.

"3… 2… 1…" Kanashimi counted down, and stuffed earplugs in her ears.

**"_OH MY HEAVENS, YUYA-SAN!_** **_HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY BE WEARING THAT OUTRAGEOUS GET-UP!"_**

"Itai…" Yuya replied, falling backwards and clutching her head, "Okuni-san, itaaaaaiiii…"

"If you would allow me, Izumo-no-Okuni-san, I shall explain the situation to you," Migeira stepped in, gallantly coming to Yuya's rescue. He proffered his hand to the dazed and outraged miko.

Okuni looked up at him and blushed. "Oh, you are such a gentleman!" she said, with a coquettish giggle.

Migiera sweat-dropped, but otherwise ignored the comment and the various looks (ranging from weirded-out to disgusted to just plain stunned) he was getting from everyone else as he took Okuni to one side out of earshot.

_"See that, that right there?"_ Benitora said, _"That's just _wrong. _We need to get this crap straightened out before anything else happens."_

"And I suppose you've got a bright idea on how we do just that?" Akira snapped.

_"And you do?"_ Benitora shot back.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't, but I wouldn't want to explain it to a thicky like you," said Akira boredly, "Your head might explode." (Nobody seemed to think it odd that he could communicate with Benitora; then again, no one was really paying attention.)

_"Son of a…"_

"That's enough, both of you!" Yuya scolded, sweeping Akira up into her arms as Benitora lunged. Akira stuck his tongue out at Benitora, who growled threateningly but could do little else.

"Ah, Kyo-san, where are you going?" Yukimura asked as Kyo stood up and slung Tenro across his shoulder.

"Anywhere but here," Kyo said, "I'll probably have that little bitch's head on a platter inside of two minutes without the lot of you holding me back."

"Wait, Kyo!" Yuya called, running after him, "Are you crazy? If you try going after Narrator on your own, you'll…!"

Kyo rounded on her so suddenly she almost plowed right into him. "I'll what, dog-face?" Kyo sneered, "You think I'm actually lose to some insane little girl who fights with an iron pan?"

"Hey, you said it, we didn't, and given your track record, Kyo-honey, I'd place my bets on onee-sama," Kanashimi contributed (un)helpfully.

Kyo ignored her, only because he was staring down at Yuya so intensely she wanted nothing more than to find a nice place to hide. But of course, Yuya's instinctive reaction to Kyo's intimidation was to get even angrier. "Haven't you seen what she's done?" Yuya countered, "She's not something you should try to take on alone, she might…! Hey!"

Kyo grabbed her mid-rant, effectively cutting off her air supply as he clasped her to him.

And not a moment too soon…

**WHUMP!**

_Something_ hit the ground where Yuya had just been standing with earth-shuddering force, but by now, everyone was so used to high-velocity impacts from random objects, no one lost their footing.

"(Hack!_coughcough!_) Dammit…! (choke_cough_!) _Now_ what?" Sasuke demanded angrily, eyes watering as dust clouded the air for the second time in less than twenty minutes.

Yukimura sighed and wished in vain for sake.

"…ooooog…"

An undeniably human-shaped form pried itself up out of the crater at Yuya and Kyo's feet. "Where am I?" Shinrei asked dazedly.

"Shinrei!" At the sight of the Mibu warrior, three katana sang from their respective saya, while those without operable weapons or limbs to use them settled for guarded stances.

"Ohohohoho, it's raining bishonen!" Kanashimi cackled gleefully. "Oi!" she yelled at the sky, "send down my Pookie next!"

"What the hell are you doing here, Shinrei?" Kyo demanded (after making certain Yuya was behind him and not getting in the way).

"As though I would tell you that," retorted Shinrei, after spitting out a mouthful of dirt. He vaulted neatly out of his hole in the ground and surveyed the warriors arranged in a loose formation around him. His twin, wickedly sharp re-curve blades seemed to materialize in his hands. "It is time for you to die, Onime no Kyo, and this time, no one is going to…"

"I'm still _waiting_!" Kanashimi blared, shaking her fist at the sky, her ki crackling with irritation.

"… stop me. Who is that?" Shinrei asked, wondering why the strange girl seemed vaguely familiar.

"Like a dead man needs to know," Kyo said.

"Hn," Shinrei snorted disparagingly. By chance, his glance happened to fall on Yuya. "It would be a shame for me to defeat you now and consign your woman to an untimely death, but I cannot turn from a fight when the enemy of the Mibu is right in front of me."

"What!" Akira, Migeira, and Sasuke demanded angrily.

_"Oh, you did **not** just say what I think you said!"_ Benitora howled.

"You'll gain no advantage in a fight with Kyo-san by threatening Yuya-san," Yukimura pointed out, secretly wondering if Shinrei's impact with the ground had scrambled his brains.

But Shinrei had seen the way Kyo stiffened at his reminder. "You still have time left to reach the Mibu lands, Kyo," he continued, "Or do you actually want my Suiryuu to devour her heart?"

"Eh?" Yuya had been plenty confused when Shinrei first decided to pay attention to her, but now he was just being plain weird. "What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"You know very well what I'm talking about," said Shinrei, "The dragons I put in your body when I…"

Now, let us remember that Shinrei's a bright boy (for the most part) but he can be _rather_ a bit slow on the uptake. It was only just then that Shinrei realized that the girl in front of him, whom he had consigned to a most horrible death should Kyo not defeat him, was not only not wearing her usual outfit, but also held no trace of his water-wyrm curse.

"… geck. How is this possible?" Shinrei demanded, gaping at Yuya in disbelief, "No one could remove my curse, not even Muramasa-sama himself!"

Kyo decided he had heard enough babbling from the self-righteous prick. Tenro flashed down ward on Shinrei's unprotected neck, and the Mibu water-wielder only just managed to block it. He responded with the rapid, whirling vortex of his blade dance, which Kyo was forced to dodge with some might fancy footwork.

Things were shaping up quite nicely in terms of an all-out, no-holds-barred, chop-till-you-drop duel when Kanashimi decided She Had Had Enough.

"I have had _ENOUGH OF THIS!_" she announced, "Onee-sama's run amok, I've got to save the universe, the group I'm babysitting keeps wandering off and getting attacked, and to top it all off, _I DIDN'T GET MY POOKIE_! **_SOMEONE MUST PAY!_**"

Shinrei was about to deliver his tour-de-force attack of Suimabaku-ryuusen when he was unexpectedly and quite rudely plowed into the ground, hog-tied with a roll's worth of duct tape, and his hair forcibly braided into two glitter-bespangled pigtails.

"Ahhhh, I feel better now," Kanashimi said placidly, seated on Shinrei's back and playing idly with one of his new braids, "Bishonen-torture is _so_ therapeutic!"

Before Kyo could throw a hissy fit over being denied the opportunity to beat the crap out of Shinrei, Yukimura smoothly stepped in to get some answers to several nagging questions.

"How did you wind up here, Shinrei-san?"

"Mmmmpf-errr graumpgh miierg ahn!"

"Any chance you could remove the gag you've placed over his mouth, Kanashimi-san?" Yukimura requested politely.

Kanashimi clicked her tongue and sighed. "I don't know why you think he'll answer your questions," she answered, "I know the type - he'll keep his trap shut till Judgment Day if he thinks it'll piss off his enemies. Besides, this way it's nice and quiet again."

"Kanashimi-san…"

"Oh, all right!" Kanashimi grumbled, "Damn you and your melty puppy-dog eyes!"

Yukimura grinned a smug, cat-like smirk, but otherwise ignored the comment.

**_RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPPPPPPP!_**

"_UUUUUAAAAAAAARGH!_" Shinrei bellowed, informing everyone of his displeasure of having his lips nearly ripped off along with the duct tape, "RELEASE ME THIS INSTANT WOMAN SO THAT I CAN AVENGE MY HONOR AND DESTROY YOU!"

"Gee, you really know how to sweet-talk a girl, don't'cha?" Kanashimi purred, not moving in the least.

Kyo snorted. "Dogs who have been beat should know when to keep their yapping traps shut," he informed Shinrei. He was still pissed that a decent fight had been interrupted and that Shinrei was still breathing, but with characteristic Kyo-ness, he shrugged it off and let Yukimura entertain himself questioning Shinrei.

"What do you think he meant when he talked about dragons eating my heart, Kyo?" Yuya asked him worriedly.

Kyo glanced sidelong at her and "hn"-ed.

"You're lots of help," Yuya muttered sarcastically, electing to leave Kyo to his sulk and listen in on Yukimura's interrogation.

"Oi, quit tickling him in the nose with that thing!" Kanashimi protested, "You're making him all squirmy and I can't put my mascara on!"

"My apologies, Kanashimi-san," said Yukimura, sighing and putting aside the puffy-headed weed (for the time being), "He's being awfully stubborn."

Shinrei glared, but his mouth remained stubbornly closed.

Yuya sweat-dropped, wondering what clan of ninja used such intelligence-gathering techniques. Sasuke, for one, did not seem perturbed in the least.

"Obviously your onee-sama had something to do with this," Yukimura continued, "Question is, what did she do to him?"

"You mean, besides drop-kicking him from the sky?" Kanashimi asked and shrugged. "Beats the hell outta me."

"Maybe she's just trying to slow us down by having Shinrei attack us," Yuya suggested. Everyone, including Shinrei, looked at her in surprise. "I mean, nothing seems wrong with him at first glance, right?"

"Hmmm…" Yukimura put his chin in his hand and mulled this over.

"You…" Shinrei spoke up, staring at Yuya with a frown of befuddlement, "How _did_ you erase my curse?"

_"Oh, so we're back to that again, are we!"_ Benitora demanded.

"This curse he keeps referring to," Akira said to Yuya, "Are you certain you have no idea what he's talking about?" He was getting a pretty clear reading from Shinrei that the Mibu warrior was firmly convinced he had attacked Yuya in some way. There was also something a bit… off in his aura that Akira found unsettling.

Yuya shook her head vigorously. "No, I don't," she insisted. Being careful not to flash anything more than necessary, Yuya crouched on the ground and looked hard at Shinrei. "What do you mean when you say you put a curse on me?"

Shinrei's confusion became annoyance. "What game are you trying to play with me, girl?" he snapped, "You know perfectly well that I placed water dragons into you that shall devour your heart in twenty days, in order to show Kyo how weak he was. But somehow…" Here he became angry and bewildered again, "… you have freed yourself from them! That is impossible!"

"Again with the squirming!" Kanashimi complained, jabbing Shinrei in the back of the head with her lip-liner, "Will you please knock it off?" She sighed in annoyance and banished her make-up back into Hammerspace. "Oh, and I've figured out what onee-sama's done to him, by the way."

"Do please elaborate," Yukimura said politely.

"Simple - she's crossed the line dividing animeverse and mangaverse; this Shinrei here is from the manga version, which is why his memory of events is different from everyone else's."

"Eh?"

Kanashimi sighed again and rubbed her temples. "I was really hoping I wouldn't have to do this…"

* * *

"… and that's why the proliferation of realities can be manipulated by an authoress and how Shinrei got here," Kanashimi said, capping her marker. The gigantic wipe board behind her was marked into red oblivion with a plethora of mathematical formulas, diagrams, proofs, and one or two scattered doodles of penguins, squirrels and a synopsis on the meta-physical properties of duct-tape. 

"Fascinating," Migeira remarked.

"Agreed," said Shinrei, looking almost happy, despite the fact that he was still bound up in duct-tape with a new hairstyle, "Remarkable how simple it is once something is explained to you."

"_Anyone else find the fact that those two are having **fun** disturbing?"_ Benitora asked.

"Just because you're too thick to comprehend higher logic doesn't mean that no one else can," Akira pointed out.

Yuya yawned and opened her eyes. "Hmmm…? Is it over yet? Okuni-san, wake up, you're making my arm fall asleep!"

"… my head hurts," Sasuke said frankly.

"Probably has something to do with those fumes from her ink brush," noted Yukimura, feeling a little mentally strained himself.

Hotaru had fallen asleep in Yuya's lap after succumbing to marker fumes, and Yuya had not bothered to wake him up just yet.

"Any questions?" Kanashimi offered, but the look her eyes promised painful, messy death if someone took her up on it.

"We're going to have to leave this reality to find her, aren't we," Kyo spoke up regardless.

Kanashimi blinked, looked back at the board and blinked again. "Holy shite… you're right!" she gasped, "By displacing such a radical element and crossing the inter-dimensional divide…" She did a couple more calculations. "Hey, anyone here good at meta-physics?"

Migeira and Shinrei raised their hands.

"Geek," Kyo said under his breath.

Shinrei bristled. "I was honored to receive instruction in such an arcane art - a warrior benefits from all sorts of knowledge."

"And Sakuya-nee-san was in the same class," Hotaru piped up unexpectedly.

"Shut it!" Shinrei barked, cheeks flaming scarlet.

"ANYWAY…" Kanashimi interrupted them with a growl, "Both of you, come here - I'm good at the theoretical stuff, but my proofs need to be checked." She released Shinrei from his bonds so that he and Migeira could help her.

"But if Kanashimi-san's onee-sama is no longer here, isn't that a good thing?" Yuya asked hopefully.

"Not really, since it means she's no longer here to correct what damage she's already done," Yukimura observed, "Who knows what will happen if she decides to corrupt another reality linked to ours."

"Oh…" Yuya's sudden optimism died instantly. _'But… leaving this reality sounds pretty dangerous,_' she thought, _'Not to mention impossible.'_

"Are you sure about that? Shinrei, check out this variable…" Kanashimi, Migeira and Shinrei were pretty deep in serious discussion; Akira cocked one long ear and caught Kanashimi's whispered, "Well, we'll just have to make sure Kyo doesn't find out till it's too late."

The ice-wielder filed that away as Probably Important.

"Okay," Kanashimi announced several minutes later, "We got the details of the extra-dimensional trans-reality metaphor complete, I just need to get the engine in gear. Essentially, by leaving this reality and going into the other one, we're placing a temporary freeze on the chaos that's going to destroy your reality. We have to overpower onee-sama in the other reality and bring back here before the freeze collapses."

"There's a lot of "if" you left unsaid in that," Yukimura pointed out as Kanashimi pulled out a piece of chalk and began marking the trees, rocks and dirt around them with strange symbols, "_If_ we find your onee-sama in time. _If _we manage to bring her here. _If _our leaving will indeed halt the imbalance. _If_ we even manage to leave in the first place."

Migeira squinted at him as Kanashimi began drawing an array around the whole group. "Do you have a point?"

"No," Yukimura chirped with a shrug, "Just noting Kanashimi-san left a lot "if"-s out."

"We have no idea what's going to happen once we do get there," Yuya said out loud, having resigned herself to the idea that inter-dimensional travel was indeed possible (no one else seemed too bothered by it; either that, or the marker fumes had been _really _strong), "why do I have a bad feeling about this?"

"Because we've entrusted not only our very existence, but the survival of our very reality to someone who may or may not be evil incarnate?" Akira suggested.

"That's not funny, Akira-san," Yuya told him.

_"Unfortunately, it's not supposed to be_,' Akira thought, remembering Kanashimi's whispered remark.

"Hey, you keep going on and on about 'damage to the universe' and all," Sasuke spoke up as the last chalk line was being drawn, "but other than the stupid shit that's happened to us, I haven't seen anything to be worried about."

Just then, the sky turned a hideous shade of puce as black lighting arced across it, ominous thunder rolling overhead like war drums. A penguin popped into existence and kicked Sasuke hard in the shin before vanishing.

"Are you really stupid, or are you just doing this to piss me off?" Kanashimi asked Sasuke, who was clutching her shin and gaping at the space where the penguin had been, "Saying something like that is just _asking_ for cosmic retribution. I would have thought Kyo's little embarrassment would have driven the point home for everyone!" She glared at the assembly. "All right, now, sit down, shut up, keep your feet off the seats, no smoking, and especially, _no tempting fate_ until the dimensional transference is complete. Got it?

"Bob, beam us up!"

**_ZORCH!_**

* * *

Oh the insanity! The Laws of Physics are defied and parallel universes come crashing together! How will it all end? 

Frankly, The Narrator has not the slightest clue.


End file.
